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WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORE   •    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO 
DALLAS  •    ATLANTA   •    SAN  FRANOSCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON   •    BOMBAY   •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Lm. 

TORONTO 


WOMEN 
PROFESSIONAL    WORKERS 

A   STUDY   MADE   FOR   THE 
WOMEN'S    EDUCATIONAL    AND    INDUSTRIAL    UNION 


BY 

ELIZABETH  KEMPER  ADAMS,  Ph.D. 

FORMERLY   PROFESSOR   OF   EDUCATION   IN   SMITH    COLLEGE 

AND      ASSISTANT      CHIEF,      PROFESSIONAL      SECTION, 

WAR-EMERGENCY   U.   S.    EMPLOYMENT   SERVICE 


THE   MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1924 

./tK  ri[hfs  reserved 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OE  AMERICA 


Copyright,  1921, 
By  the  WOMEN'S  EDUCATIONAL  AND  INDUSTRIAL  UNION 

Set  up  and  Electrotyped.     Published  September,  1921 


FERRIS 

PRINTING    COMPANY 

NEW  YORK    CITY 


TO 

MARY  MORTON  KEKEW 

A    LEADER    OF    UNFAILING    VISION 
WHO   MADE    THIS    BOOK    POSSIBLE 


LIBRARY 


,\  1  r-    T'df  THcR 


COLLEGE 


SANf''*' 


A<v.aAH/       '-.   Ll-rORNlA 


INTRODUCTION 

What  is  a  profession?  What  persons  may  properly  be 
classified  as  professional  workers?  These  are  especially 
pertinent  questions  at  the  present  time.  The  term  "profes- 
sional" has  been  employed  somewhat  indiscriminately  be- 
cause of  the  multiplication  of  callings  requiring  initiative, 
judgment  and  independent  thought,  as  well  as  definite 
technique.  The  time  has  come  for  a  searching  analysis  and 
an  authoritative  definition  of  professional  work. 

Under  the  stimulus  of  war  women  entered  many  callings 
long  recognized  as  professions,  and  many  which  as  yet 
belong  in  the  unclassified  twilight  zone  between  the  older 
professions  and  the  trades.  In  all  of  these  women  have 
proved  their  competency.  They  have  remained  and  multi- 
plied. It  is  now  demanded  that  educational  institutions 
furnish  training  which  will  either  enable  women  imme- 
diately to  find  lucrative  employment  in  these  new  spheres 
of  effort  or  will  equip  them  with  a  basic  knowledge  and 
the  point  of  view  of  the  professional  neophyte.  What  shall 
this  training  be?  Colleges  and  universities  are  groping  in 
the  dark. 

A  number  of  non-academic  agencies  have  of  late  begun 
to  approach  the  problem  in  a  new  way.  They  have  studied 
the  professional  tasks  that  women  perform,  in  the  belief 
that  a  picture  of  the  worker  in  action  is  the  best  guide  to 
the  successful  formulation  of  the  worker's  training. 

In  the  pages  that  follow  Dr.  Adams  offers  a  penetrating 
analysis  of  the  essential  characteristics  of  a  profession. 
Out  of  a  wide  and  practical  experience  she  draws  the 
picture  of  women  in  the  professional  field  and  she  brings 
together  the  records  of  those  immensely  valuable  investiga- 
tions which  may  be  termed  in  undignified  phrase,  the  "job 
analyses"  of  the  professions.     The  book  is  primarily  the 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

history  of  the  conquest  by  women  of  a  new  terrain  where 
their  gains  have  not  yet  been  consolidated.  It  serves  an 
important  secondary  purpose  which  perhaps  its  author  did 
not  have  in  mind.  It  brings  to  officers  of  colleges  and 
universities  that  indispensable  information  concerning  the 
content  of  new  professions  on  which  alone  sound  profes- 
sional training  can  be  based. 

Samuel  P.  Capen 


PREFACE 

This  book  has  been  written  with  the  interests  and  needs 
of  several  groups  in  mind  and  so  far  as  possible  with  their 
cooperation.  It  is  designed,  first,  for  the  thoughtful  under- 
graduate who  is  trying  to  select  her  occupation,  or,  having 
selected  it,  trying  to  see  its  professional  and  social  relations ; 
second,  for  the  young  woman  two  or  three  years  out  of 
college  or  school  who  has  drifted  into  a  "dead-end"  occupa- 
tion or  from  one  occupation  to  another,  and  is  now  trying  to 
get  her  bearings  and  to  take  a  longer  view ;  third,  for 
teachers  and  administrators  in  colleges  and  schools — deans, 
principals,  vocational  advisers,  and  so  on — who  are  seeking 
a  broader  basis  in  fact  and  outlook  in  their  dealings  with 
young  people;  fourth,  for  employers  who  are  increasingly 
turning  to  the  colleges  and  professional  schools  for  young 
men  and  young  women  workers ;  fifth,  for  men  and  women 
everywhere  who  are  considering  the  scope  and  nature  of  the 
professions  and  the  implications  of  the  new  participation 
of  women  in  the  worlds  of  inquiry  and  affairs.  So  wide 
a  range  of  possible  readers  and  a  field  so  rapidly  changing 
and  still  so  imperfectly  explored  mean  of  necessity  more 
questions  asked  than  answered,  many  not  even  asked,  facts 
used  illustratively  rather  than  exhaustively.  While  the  book 
contains  considerable  first-hand  material  both  from  profes- 
sional workers  and  from  their  employers,  and  seeks  to 
reach  impartial  conclusions  in  the  light  of  the  best  avail- 
able evidence,  it  is  by  no  means  a  research  study.  Through- 
out, the  professional  problems  of  women  have  been  treated 
in  connection  with  the  professional  problems  of  men,  al- 
though much  remains  to  be  done  in  this  direction.  It  is 
hoped,  therefore,  that  the  discussion  may  not  be  without 
value  to  men  professional  workers  and  to  those  who  are 
training  and  advising  them.  The  day  is  coming  when  it 
will  be  neither  necessary  nor  profitable  to  write  separate 

fas, 


X  PREFACE 

books  for  men  and  women  of  the  professional  groups.  But 
while  women  remain  a  new  and  somewhat  indeterminate 
professional  "labor-supply,"  consideration  of  their  training, 
status,  and  prospects  affords  an  opportunity  to  approach 
from  a  new  angle  the  problems  which  are  confronting  all 
professions  and  professional  workers  in  the  modern  world. 

Wcmi-en  Professional  Workers  was  undertaken  in  191 7 
at  the  request  of  Mrs.  Mary  Morton  Kehew,  for  many 
years  the  farseeing  and  public-spirited  president  of  the 
Women's  Educational  and  Industrial  Union  of  Boston,  and 
at  the  suggestion  of  Miss  Florence  Jackson,  director  of  the 
Bureau  of  Vocational  Advice  and  Appointment  of  the 
Union,  the  first  of  the  bureaus  of  occupations  for  trained 
women  in  the  United  States  and  a  leader  in  the  intensive 
study  of  occupations  for  them.  While  written  independ- 
ently and  on  a  different  plan,  it  takes  in  some  sense  the  place 
of  a  pioneer  volume  now  out  of  print  issued  in  1910  by  the 
Women's  Educational  and  Industrial  Union  entitled  Vo- 
cations for  the  Trained  Woman:  Introductory  Papers 
and  made  up  of  brief  descriptive  articles  on  occupations 
other  than  teaching  contributed  by  experienced  workers  in 
the  several  fields  then  open  to  women.  This  volume  was 
followed  in  1914  and  1916  by  two  volumes  devoted  to  in- 
tensive, first-hand  studies  of  opportunities  for  women  in 
agriculture,  social  service,  secretarial  service,  real  estate, 
and  domestic  science.  Together,  they  make  up  Parts  One, 
Two  and  Three  of  Vocations  for  the  Trained  Woman,  in- 
cluded in  Volume  One  of  the  Union's  series  of  Studies  in 
Economic  Relations  of  W^omen. 

In  the  decade  between  the  publication  of  Vocations  for 
the  Trained  Woman:  Part  One  and  Women  Professional 
Workers  the  situation  of  educated  women  as  regards  teach- 
ing and  other  professions  has  undergone  almost  a  reversal. 
To-day  the  attention  of  young  women  of  ability  and  pro- 
fessional intent  needs  to  be  called  specifically  to  teaching 
as  the  most  fundamental  and  important  type  of  public  and 
social  service.  The  chapter  dealing  with  this  field  has 
purposely  been  placed  after  the  chapters  dealing  with  other 
fields  in  order  to  present  teaching  in  its  relations  to  these 
professions  and  to  modern  social  movements. 


PREFACE  '      xi 

The  writer's  sincere  thanks  for  assistance  are  due  to  the 
professional  women  and  their  employers  who  filled  out  her 
schedules  of  inquiry  and  gave  her  personal  interviews ;  to 
the  men  and  women  experts  in  many  lines  who  kindly  read 
and  criticized  chapters  dealing  with  their  several  profes- 
sions; to  many  organizations  and  individuals  who  gener- 
ously furnished  information,  especially  to  the  colleges,  the 
National  Federation  of  Business  and  Professional  Women's 
Clubs,  the  New  York  Bureau  of  Vocational  Information, 
and  the  Women's  Educational  and  Industrial  Union.  But 
for  the  facts  presented,  the  opinions  expressed,  and  the 
limitations  of  the  treatment,  she  alone  is  responsible. 

Conway,  Massachusetts 
November,  1920 


TABLE  OF   CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

Introduction .       .       .  vii 

Preface ix 

I.    Who   Are    Professional  Workers?       ....  i 

II.     Women   as    Professional   Workers       .       ,       .       .  i8 

III.  Specifications  for  Professional  Workers    .       .       .  :^6 

IV.  The   "Learned   Professions"  :    Medicine,   Law,   the 

Ministry       .       .• 62 

V.     Health   Services  Other  Than  Medicine     .       .       .  83, 

VI.     Food  and  Living   Services 103 

VIT.     Food  and  Living   Services 117 

VIII.     Community,  Civic,  and  Government  Services     .       .  133 

IX.     Social  Services 156 

X.     Social  Services i73 

XI.     Personnel   Services 185 

XII.     Industrial  and  Labor   Services 201 

XIII.  Commercial     Services,     Office     and     Mercantile. 

What  Is  a  Professional  Secretary?      .       .       .  223 

XIV.  Commercial  Services  :   Banking,  Insurance,   Public 

Utilities,  Real  Estate 254 

XV.     Information     SER\acES :      Journalism,     Publishing, 

Ad\'t:rtising,  Publicity 279 

XVI.     Art     Services:      Literature,     Drama,     Pageantry; 

Architectltre ;  Other  Fine  and  Applied  Arts     .  308 

XVII.     Technical    Services  :     Sciences    and   Technologies, 

Psychology,  Statistics 3-5 

xiii 


xiv  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PACE 

XVIII.    Library  and  Museum  SERvacES  ......  356 

XIX.    Teaching  and  Other  Educational  Services     .      .  373 

fXX^    The  Securing  of  Employment  by  Women  Profes- 

^-'"'^        SIGNAL    Workers 393 

XXI.    The  Colleges  and  Women    Professional  Workers  410 

XXII.    Some     Suggeshons      for      Women      Professional 

Workers 430 

Selected  and  Annotated  Reading  List       ,      ,      .  443 

Index  .      .      *      «     *      .;     ...     ;.      *      .      ,,      »  456 


! 


WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 
CHAPTER  I 

WHO   ARE   PROFESSIONAL   WORKERS? 

There  has  never  been  a  time  when  it  was  so  necessary 
for  professional  persons,  men  or  women,  young  or  old, 
novices  or  veterans,  to  ask  themselves  honestly  and  thought- 
fully: Why  do  I  call  myself  a  professional  worker?  What 
am  I  doing  to  justify  the  title?  The  unprecedented  demand 
for  experts  of  many  sorts  during  the  war  magnified  the  im- 
portance of  the  professions  while  at  the  same  time  it  chal- 
lenged many  of  their  comfortable  assumptions.  Old  pro- 
fessions have  changed  places  in  the  scale  of  values ;  new 
professions  have  emerged  and  are  emerging.  The  temper 
and  methods  and  outlooks  of  all  professions  are  undergoing 
profound  alterations.  For  the  first  time  they  are  beginning 
to  consider  seriously  their  relations  to  one  another,  to  other 
groups  of  workers,  and  to  the  social  order  as  a  whole. 
Women  in  far  greater  numbers  are  looking  to  professional 
careers.  The  very  term  "professional"  has  acquired  a  wide- 
spread and  easy  popularity.  To  answer  the  first  two  ques- 
tions, accordingly,  we  must  attempt  to  answer  two  others: 
Who,  today,  may  justly  be  considered  as  professional  work- 
ers? What,  to-day,  may  justly  be  considered  professional 
occupations  ? 

To  get  at  the  distinguishing  marks  of  a  professional 
worker,  it  is  the  part  of  wisdom  to  look  first  at  the  historic 
"learned  professions"  of  medicine,  law,  and  divinity.  All 
three  involve:  (i)  a  considerable  period  of  special  prepa- 

I 


2  WOMEN  PROFESSIOXAL  WORKERS 

ration  and  training,  tending  to  become  more  exacting;  (2) 
a  public  and  frequently  legal  recognition  of  professional 
status,  by  examination,  registration,  ordination,  and  the  like; 
(3)  eligibility  to  membership  in  professional  societies  and 
associations  carrying  with  it  the  obligation  to  maintain  pro- 
fessional standards  of  skill  and  conduct;  (4)  a  consequent 
position  of  responsibility  in  and  to  the  community;  (5) 
practice  of  the  profession  as  a  permanent  calling  providing 
an  adequate  livelihood. 

Dictionary  definitions  agree  substantially,  although  in  far 
more  majestic  language,  upon  these  marks  of  a  profession. 
They  all  point  out  that  the  derivation  of  the  word  empha- 
sizes the  public  and  active  character  of  the  occupation,  the 
original  Latin  word  meaning  open  or  public  avowal,  a  sense 
retained  in  speaking  of  the  profession  of  a  monk  or  nun, 
public  admission  into  a  religious  order.  They  likewise  call 
attention  to  the  social  responsibilities  flowing  from  the  spe- 
cial training  and  public  recognition  involved.  A  profession 
is  a  "vocation  in  which  a  professed  knowledge  of  some  de- 
partment of  science  or  learning  is  used  by  its  practical  appli- 
cation to  the  affairs  of  others  either  in  advising,  guiding,  or 
teaching  them,  or  in  serving  their  interests  or  welfare  in  the 
practice  of  an  art  founded  upon  it."  The  Oxford  Dic- 
tionary quotes  Frederick  Denison  Maurice  as  saying  in 
1834:  "A  profession  in  our  country  is  expressly  that  kind 
of  business  which  deals  primarily  with  men  as  men  and  is 
thus  distinguished  from  a  trade,^  which  provides  for  the 
external  wants  or  occasions  of  men."  They  mark  off  a 
profession  negatively  from  other  occupations.  It  is  not 
purely  mechanical,  commercial,  agricultural,  or  the  like,  al- 
though it  may  concern  itself  with  all  these  fields;  it  is  not 
mere  skill ;  it  is  not  mere  study  and  investigation ;  it  is  not 
mere  pursuit  of  one's  own  purposes.  The  old  description  of 
a  profession  as  involving  mental  and  not  manual  work  has 
lapsed  with  the  growth  of  the  scientific  and  technological 
professions  and  the  use  of  instruments  of  precision  and 

^  For  suggestive  comparisons  between  a  profession  and  a  trade, 
see  Trades  and  Professions,  by  Prof.  George  H.  Palmer.  Riverside 
Educational  Monographs  (1914)  and  Teaching  as  a  Profession,  by 
Frank  Roscoe,  in  Cambridge  Essays  on  Education  (igij). 


WHO  ARE  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS?         3 

techniques  of  manipulation.  But  the  insistence  upon  intel- 
lectual direction  and  control  is  stronger  than  ever. 

Even  the  secondary  use  of  the  term  professional  as  op- 
posed to  amateur,  in  speaking  of  a  professional  coach  or 
a  professional  entertainer,  carries  with  it  the  idea  that  the 
occupation  is  followed  as  a  calling  and  not  as  a  mere  avoca- 
tion or  pastime.  The  Oxford  Dictionary  emphasizes  the 
ethical  obligations  of  a  profession  in  saying  that  the  adjec- 
tive professional  is  "disparagingly  applied  to  one  who  makes 
a  trade  of  anything  that  is  properly  pursued  from  higher 
motives,  as  a  'professional  politician.'  "  The  popular  esti- 
mate of  unworthy  professional  practitioners  is  reflected  in 
such  epithets  as  quack  doctor,  shyster  lawyer,  sham  minister, 
and  in  the  slight  distrust  attaching  to  a  person  who  has  fitted 
himself  for  one  of  these  three  professions  and  then  fails 
or  ceases  to  follow  it — witness  the  gibes  that  our  legisla- 
tures are  made  up  of  unsuccessful  lawyers  and  that  the 
most  glittering  oil  and  mining  stocks  are  offered  by  ex- 
clergymen.  On  the  other  hand,  the  popular  belief  that  a 
certain  prestige  is  given  by  the  term  "professional"  accounts 
for  its  use  by  dancing-masters,  chiropodists,  masseurs,  for- 
tune-tellers, and  so  on,  constituting  a  pseudo-professional 
fringe. 

A  careful  analysis  of  the  characteristics  of  a  genuine  pro- 
fession is  given  by  Dr.  Abraham  Flexner  in  an  address 
delivered  before  the  National  Conference  of  Charities  and 
Correction,  entitled  "Is  Social  Work  a  Profession  ?''  ^  Dr. 
Flexner's  six  criteria  are  as  follows:  (i)  Professions  in- 
volve essentially  intellectual  operations  with  large  individual 
responsibility;  (2)  They  derive  their  raw  material  from 
science  and  learning;  (3)  This  material  they  work  up  to  a 
practical  and  definite  end ;  (4)  They  possess  an  education- 
ally communicable  technique;  (5)  They  tend  to  self-organi- 
zation ;  (6)  They  are  becoming  increasingly  altruistic  in  mo- 
tivation. 

Dr.  Flexner  drives  home  the  necessity  of  intellectual  mas- 
tery and  consequent  assumption  of  responsibility  in  a  pro- 
fession. "A  free,  resourceful,  and  unhampered  intelli- 
gence applied  to  problems  and  seeking  to  understand  and 

^Proceedings,  1915. 


4  WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

master  them — that  is  in  the  first  instance  characteristic  of  a 
profession.  .  .  .  Responsibihty  follows  from  the  fact  that 
professions  are  intellectual  in  character,  for  in  all  intellec- 
tual operations  the  thinker  takes  upon  himself  a  risk.  .  .  . 
The  execution  or  application  of  a  thought-out  technique — 
be  it  crude  or  exquisite,  physical  or  mental — is,  after  all. 
routine.  Some  one  back  of  the  routineer  has  done  the 
thinking  and  therefore  bears  the  responsibility,  and  he  alone 
deserves  to  be  considered  professional." 

His  fourth  criterion  is  a  concrete  and  practical  test  amid 
the  multitude  of  new  activities  calling  themselves  profes- 
sional and  the  flourishing  crop  of  "intensive"  and  "special" 
courses  sown  by  the  war.  "Each  of  the  unmistakable  pro- 
fessions .  .  .  possesses  a  technique  capable  of  communica- 
tion through  an  orderly  and  highly  specialized  educational 
discipline.  Despite  differences  of  opinion  about  details,  the 
members  of  a  given  profession  are  pretty  well  agreed  .  .  . 
as  to  the  amount  and  kind  of  training,  general  and  special, 
which  should  precede  admission  to  the  professional  school ; 
as  to  the  content  and  length  of  the  professional  course. 
These  formulations  are  meant  to  exclude  from  professions 
those  incapable  of  pursuing  them  in  a  large,  free,  and  re- 
sponsible way;  and  to  make  sure  that  those  potentially  ca- 
pable are  so  instructed  as  to  get  the  fullest  possible  benefit 
from  the  training  provided."  The  importance  of  this  cri- 
terion as  a  measure  of  the  assured  standing  of  a  profession 
is  illustrated  by  the  evolution  of  professional  training  in 
medicine  and  law  from  apprenticeship  with  some  old  doc- 
tor or  lawyer  to  institutions  like  the  Johns  Hopkins  Medical 
School  or  the  Harvard  Law  School.  The  development 
within  a  decade  or  so  of  schools  of  social  work,  schools  of 
journalism,  schools  of  commerce  and  business  administra- 
tion, schools  of  public  health,  are  significant  indications  of 
growing  professional  standards  in  these  fields.  Everywhere 
professional  schools  of  reputation  are  requiring  at  least  two 
years  of  college  work  for  admission.  They  advise  college 
graduation,  and  a  small  but  increasing  number  insist  upon 
it.  Nowadays  no  occupation  can  justly  claim  professional 
standing  if  its  specialized  training  is  based  upon  anything 
less  than  a  full  high-school  education  as  an  irreducible  mini- 


WHO  ARE  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS?        5 

mum.  No  worker,  moreover,  who  is  not  equipped  with  a 
generous  liberal  education  and  the  best  professional  train- 
ing is  prepared  to  advance  to  positions  of  full  professional 
responsibility. 

Dr.  Flexner  takes  a  hopeful  view  of  the  tendency  of  pro- 
fessions to  self-organization.  "Professional  activities  are 
so  definite,  so  absorbing  in  interest,  so  rich  in  duties  and  re- 
sponsibilities, that  they  completely  engage  their  votaries. 
The  social  and  personal  lives  of  professional  men  and  their 
families  thus  tend  to  organize  around  a  professional  nu- 
cleus. A  strong  class  consciousness  soon  develops.  .  .  .  Or- 
ganizations of  physicians,  lawyers,  and  teachers  may  find 
the  personal  interests  of  the  individuals  of  which  they  are 
composed  arrayed  against  those  of  society  at  large.  On  the 
whole,  however,  organized  groups  of  this  kind  are,  under 
democratic  conditions,  apt  to  be  more  responsive  to  public 
interest  than  are  unorganized  and  isolated  individuals.  In 
any  event  professional  groups  have  mo;-e  and  more  tended  to 
view  themselves  as  organs  contrived  for  the  achievement  of 
social  ends  rather  than  as  bodies  formed  to  stand  together 
for  the  assertion  of  right  or  the  protection  of  interests  and 
principles." 

Professor  Palmer  ^  presents  the  group  spirit  of  the  profes- 
sions even  more  winningly.  "It  is  significant  that  we  do 
not  say  'a  professional.'  .  .  .  Our  common  term  is  'a  mem- 
ber of  a  profession,'  plainly  indicating  that  he  who  deserves 
to  be  called  such  is  no  longer  a  merely  individual  person. 
He  has  merged  his  individuality  with  that  of  others  and 
now  belongs  to  a  troop,  a  company,  a  brotherhood,  who 
possess  a  common  stock  of  knowledge,  common  purposes, 
common  standards  which  are  continually  growing  and  to 
which  each  member  of  the  brotherhood  is  expected  to  con- 
form and  contribute." 

It  is  undoubtedly  true  that  the  contributions  of  the  pro- 
fessional groups  during  the  war  did  much  to  quicken  their 
sense  of  public  and  social  responsibility,  and  that  they 
are  now  confronting  larger  obligations  and  opportunities. 
But  the  fact  remains  that  their  close  organization  in  the  past 
has  too  often  made  them  ex^clusive  and  self-satisfied,  taking 

*  Trades  and  Professions,  pp.  22,  23. 


6  WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

their  "public"  character  in  a  narrow  and  conventional  sense. 
There  has  been  a  certain  snobbery  about  many  professional 
persons;  and  the  much  vaunted  systems  of  "professional 
ethics"  have  often  become  in  practice  hardly  more  than  rules 
of  professional  etiquette,  operating  against  flexibility  of 
mind  and  breadth  of  outlook.  Each  profession  has  been  a 
world  in  itself,  learning  little  from  other  professions  and  in- 
different to  the  world  at  large.  The  spirit  of  the  times  and 
their  own  progress  are  doing  away  with  these  limitations; 
but  professional  customs  and  habits  of  mind  are  strongly 
entrenched,  and  cannot  be  transformed  in  a  day. 

Medicine  has  taken  the  lead  in  adopting  a  more  social  and 
cooperative  attitude  through  its  new  emphasis  upon  preven- 
tion and  public  health.  That  it  is  prepared  to  go  still  fur- 
ther is  indicated  by  the  present  active  discussion  of  "group" 
medical  practice,  as  illustrated  at  one  end  of  the  financial 
scale  by  the  Mayo  Clinic  and  by  certain  hospitals  and  dis- 
pensaries at  the  other.  But  all  professions  are  facing  de- 
mands upon  them  for  public  service  and  are  cooperating  in 
public  enterprises.  The  new  ideas  at  work  found  expression 
in  the  program  of  an  inter-professional  conference  held  in 
Detroit  in  November,  1919,  where  the  three  main  topics  for 
discussion  were:  (i)  Professional  organizations;  their  func- 
tions and  interrelations;  (2)  Relations  of  the  professions  to 
the  public;  (3)  Educational  obligations  of  the  professions. 
Detailed  topics  proposed  for  discussion  were  as  follows : 
The  possibilities  of  cooperation  among  the  professions  for 
the  common  good ;  comparison  of  the  ethical  standards  of 
the  different  professions — in  how  far  are  they  socially 
minded,  in  how  far  self-regarding;  can  the  professions  be 
made  more  democratic?  Should  they  become  professional 
guilds  ?  How  can  the  idea  of  the  obligation  for  public  serv- 
ice be  extended  among  the  professions?  Can  the  enthu- 
siasm of  the  war-time  service  to  the  Government  be  per- 
petuated to  any  appreciable  degree?  To  what  extent  do  the 
professions  now  supply  the  quality  and  scope  of  service 
needed  by  all  classes  of  society?  How  can  the  professional 
man  get  into  right  relations  with  all  salary  and  wage  earners 
who  come  under  his  direction?  Can  the  professions  repre- 
sent the  public  interest  in  matters  of  labor  adjustments? 


WHO  ARE  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS?        7 

How  can  education  for  the  professions  be  made  more  real 
as  to  problems  of  the  day?  How  can  the  average  profes- 
sional establishment  be  made  more  democratic,  and  so  ad- 
vance the  education  of  both  masters  and  men?  What  can 
be  done  to  spread,  in  the  high  schools  and  colleges,  knowl- 
edge of  the  significance,  ideals,  and  functions  of  the  sev- 
eral professions? 

A  practical  attempt  to  distinguish  professional  and  non- 
professional workers  was  made  in  instructions  sent  out  in 
February,  1919,  to  field  offices  of  the  women's  service  of  the 
Professional  Section  of  the  War-Emergency  United  States 
Employment  Service: — 

"Applicants  for  professional  registration  shall  present 
satisfactory  evidence  that  they  are  doing,  or  are  qualified  to 
do,  work  of  a  professional  character;  and  that  their  needs 
cannot  be  met  through  other  sections  of  the  U.  S,  Employ- 
ment Service. 

"Workers  doing  routine  work  under  the  direction  of 
others,  using  a  simple  mechanical  operation  or  any  simple 
skill  or  practice  easily  learned  and  not  requiring  long  edu- 
cation and  experience,  or  the  exercise  of  any  considerable 
initiative  or  independent  judgment  in  dealing  with  either 
people  or  things,  shall  not  be  registered  as  professional 
workers,  unless  they  are  undertaking  such  routine  work 
with  a  definite  professional  purpose  and  for  a  limited  period 
of  time  as  apprentice  workers.  Among  such  non-profes- 
sional workers  shall  be  grouped,  unless  they  present  evi- 
dence to  the  contrary,  the  following  types  of  worker: — 
bookkeepers  ;  cashiers  ;  clerks  ;  collectors  ;  commercial  ma- 
chine operators ;  foremen ;  inspectors,  testers,  etc. ;  retail 
salespeople ;  stenographers ;  telegraph  and  telephone  opera- 
tors ;  typists, 

"In  general,  a  worker  shall  be  considered  professional  who 
is  equipped  by  ability,  education,  and  experience  to  main- 
tain and  to  improve  standards  of  operation  in  the  work  in 
which  she  is  engaged ;  to  know  both  why  it  goes  right  and 
what  to  do  when  it  goes  wrong.  She  is  therefore  qualified 
to  assume  positions  of  increasing  responsibility  in  one  or 
more  of  the  following  capacities: 


8  WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

"(i)  Administrative,  executive,  and  managerial  work: 
planning  and  supervising  the  carrying  out  ot  serious  un- 
dertakings. 

"(2)  Expert  work  of  a  technical  character :  medicine,  law, 
engineering,  laboratory  science ;  investigation  and  research 
of  any  kind — economic,  industrial,  educational,  social,  sta- 
tistical, scientific ;  mastery  and  use  of  a  special  subject-mat- 
ter and  technique. 

"(3)  Special  services  not  falling  under  (i)  or  (2)  :  teach- 
ing, library  work,  social  work,  journalism,  advertising  and 
publicity,  wholesale  salesmanship,  etc. 

"While  the  type  of  work  done,  rather  than  any  specific 
kind  and  amount  of  education,  shall  determine  professional 
standing,  education  is  important  evidence  in  registering 
workers  as  professional.  .  .  .  College  education  is  at  least 
presumptive  evidence  that  an  appHcant  is  a  professional 
worker.  College  graduates  without  experience  or  profes- 
sional training  shall  be  registered  as  professional  appren- 
tices and  be  given  professional  information  and  guidance. 

"No  applicant  with  less  than  a  full  high-school  education 
or  its  equivalent  shall  be  registered  as  a  professional  worker 
without  careful  inquiry  into  her  subsequent  training  and 
experience." 

A  mark  of  the  professional  worker  too  often  considered 
of  minor  importance  is  practice  proznding  adequate  liveli- 
hood, although,  as  we  have  seen,  it  is  theoretically  held  that 
pursuit  of  a  profession  in  the  spirit  of  trade  or  the  mak- 
ing of  profits  seriously  compromises  professional  character. 
Further  reflection  shows  that  this  is  an  essential  and  not  a 
superficial  attribute,  bound  up  with  the  maintenance  of  pro- 
fessional integrity,  responsibility,  and  intellectual  freedom. 
The  stress  falls  upon  the  adjective  "adequate,"  since  both 
shortage  and  surplus  interfere  with  the  highest  professional 
accomplishment.  Inadequate  livelihood  hampers  the  pro- 
fessional worker  by  distracting  his  mind  from  professional 
problems  and  interests  and  by  restricting  his  opportunities 
for  professional  and  personal  growth  and  satisfactions. 
Pursuit  of  profits  hampers  him  equally  in  another  way,  by 
substituting  a  different  set  of  problems  and  interests  for  his 


WHO  ARE  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS?        9 

professional  problems  and  interests.  In  spite  of  workers 
who  have  achieved  professional  distinction  and  reputation 
under  conditions  of  great  poverty  or  great  wealth,  it  re- 
mains psychologically  true  that  both  unpaid  bills  and  fat 
dividends  are  hostile  to  the  soundest  professional  develop- 
ment. "It  may  be  doubted,"  says  Graham  Wallas,  "whether 
the  life  of  the  professional  writer  without  other  resources 
has  not  destroyed  as  much  thought  as  it  has  produced."  ^ 
The  growing  number  of  research  foundations  and  research 
fellowships  in  this  country;  the  European  practice  of  gov- 
ernment grants  to  especially  promising  young  workers;  the 
belated  recognition  that  college  and  university  teaching  can- 
not be  fruitfully  carried  on  by  faculties  perpetually  harassed 
by  the  struggle  to  educate  their  children,  to  present  a  decent 
personal  appearance,  to  secure  needed  vacations  or  oppor- 
tunities for  further  study — all  illustrate  this  position. 

Professor  Palmer  thus  describes  the  professional  atti- 
tude toward  the  matter  of  livelihood :  "It  is  seen  that  the 
professional  man  must  live  while  doing  work  which  is  mani- 
festly of  value  to  the  public,  and  accordingly  a  stipend,  fee, 
honorarium,  or  salary  is  provided  to  cover  that  mode  of 
life  which  is  thought  appropriate  for  him,  the  kind  of  life 
and  the  consequent  scale  of  salary  being  designed  to  secure 
three  essential  elements  in  his  work,  namely,  freedom,  effi- 
ciency, and  dignity.  These  elements  and  not  money  are 
what  the  professional  man  and  his  public  regard.  ...  So 
long  as  he  has  a  due  degree  of  freedom,  is  able  to  work 
with  full  efficiency,  and  can  maintain  the  dignity  which  his 
calling  demands,  his  mind  is  discharged  from  monetary  con- 
siderations." ^  The  professional  worker,  he  says,  sells  ex- 
perience, judgment,  advice.  "We  have  no  other  merchan- 
dise than  ourselves."  He  is  not  working  for  profits  nor  on 
a  rate  basis,  so  much  work  for  so  much  pay. 

It  is  a  sign  of  the  times  that  the  term  "private  practice" 
is  coming  to  have  a  faintly  obsolete  sound,  as  a  term  in- 
compatible with  the  non-competitive  and  public  character  of 
professional  work.  We  hear  more  of  "independent  prac- 
tice" or  "consulting  practice"  or  "group  practice."    Profes- 

^The  Great  Society   (1914),  p.  187. 
"  Trades  and  Professions,  p.  9. 


10         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

sional  workers  are  becoming  in  much  larger  numbers  sal- 
aried persons ;  and  where  they  charge  fees  do  so  increas- 
ingly in  accordance  with  a  rate  agreed  upon  by  their  group 
and  publicly  known.  The  idea  is  becoming  established  that 
they  are  workers  in  the  public  interest  and  officially  or  un- 
officially in  the  public  service,  earning  a  livelihood  commen- 
surate with  their  professional  value,  but  not  concerned  with 
profits.  H.  G.  Wells  writes  thus  of  the  motives  and  the 
rewards  of  professional  workers :  "The  real  necessary  work 
of  the  world — I  don't  mean  the  labor  and  toil  only,  but 
the  intelligent  direction,  the  real  planning  and  designing  and 
inquiry,  the  management  and  the  evolution  of  ideas  and 
methods — is  in  the  enormous  majority  of  cases  done  by  sal- 
aried individuals.  .  .  .  All  the  engineering  design,  all  archi- 
tecture, all  our  public  services,  the  exquisite  work  of  our 
museum  control,  for  example,  all  the  big  wholesale  and  re- 
tail businesses,  almost  all  big  industrial  concerns,  mines,  es- 
tates— all  these  things  are  really  in  the  hands  of  salaried  or 
quasi-salaried  persons.  .  .  .  For  all  who  really  make,  who 
really  do,  the  imperative  of  gain  is  the  inconvenience,  the 
enemy.  Every  artist,  every  scientific  investigator,  every 
organizer,  every  good  workman,  knows  that.  Every  good 
architect  ,  .  .  can  tell  of  time  after  time  when  he  has  sacri- 
ficed manifest  profit  and  taken  a  loss  to  get  a  good  thing 
done  as  he  wanted  it  done ;  every  good  doctor,  too,  has 
turned  from  profit  and  high  fees  to  the  moving  and  inter- 
esting cases,  to  the  demands  of  knowledge  and  public  health ; 
every  teacher  worth  his  or  her  salt  can  witness  to  the  per- 
petual struggle  between  business  advantage  and  right 
teaching;  every  writer  has  faced  the  alternative  of  his 
aesthetic  duty  and  the  search  for  beauty  on  the  one  hand 
and  the  'salable'  on  the  other."  ^ 

This  growing  detachment  of  professional  workers  from 
the  competitive  struggle  for  profits  gives  ground  for  an 
affirmative  answer  to  the  question  posed  by  the  Inter-Profes- 
sional Conference:  "Can  the  professions  represent  the  pub- 
lic interest  in  matters  of  labor  adjustments?"  In  many 
ways  they  seem  to  stand  at  present  as  the  ideal  mediators 
between  capital  and  labor  and  to  be  preeminently  the  group 

^  New  Worlds  for  Old  (1908),  pp.  95,  g8. 


WHO  ARE  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS?       ii 

thus  described :  "The  Public  is  the  name  of  those  who  in 
any  crisis  are  seeking  the  truth  and  not  advocating  their 
dogma.  The  idea  of  the  Public  is  simply  a  short  way  of 
expressing  the  great  faith  that  a  group  of  men  and  women 
will  always  disentangle  themselves  from  their  prejudices  and 
will  be  sufficiently  powerful  to  summon  the  partisans  before 
the  bar  of  reason."  ^  But  it  is  only  fair  to  say  that  neither 
party  to  the  controversy  is  fully  ready  to  admit  their  com- 
petence. 

To  secure  some  basis  for  an  answer  to  our  second  ques- 
tion:  What,  to-day,  may  justly  be  considered  professional 
occupations? — it  is  well  to  look  briefly  at  the  social  origins 
and  social  functions  of  certain  professions.  Students  of 
social  evolution  have  pointed  out  that  the  "learned  profes- 
sions" originated  as  groups  charged  with  the  repairing  of 
tribal  damage  and  injury: — the  medicine-man  the  damage  of 
disease  and  bodily  hurt,  conceived  of  as  due  to  evil  spells ; 
the  judge  the  damage  of  violations  of  tribal  code ;  the  priest 
the  damage  of  violations  of  tribal  ritual.  All  dealt  with 
lapses  and  interruptions,  with  what  may  be  called  pathologi- 
cal social  conditions.  Only  gradually,  of  course,  were  their 
functions  differentiated.  From  this  point  of  view,  the  tribal 
artist  contended  against  disintegrating  influences  of  indi- 
vidual emotion  and  behavior  through  stirring  group  feeling 
and  group  action  by  means  of  tribal  song,  dance,  dramatic 
representation,  and  decoration.  The  teacher  emerged  from 
the  group  of  elders  as  the  person  charged  with  repairing 
the  damage  done  to  the  adult  standards  of  the  tribe  through 
the  constant  introduction  of  immature  members,  in  this  case 
a  biological  rather  than  a  pathological  deviation.  Professor 
Palmer  says  that  all  professions  are  "redemptive"  in  char- 
acter. They  arose  as  agencies  for  the  restoration  and  main- 
tenance of  group  integrity  and  well-being,  and  became  di- 
rectly concerned  with  group  regulation  and  control.  It  is 
no  wonder  that  they  have  often  become  conservative  in  the 
false  as  well  as  in  the  true  sense  of  the  term. 

To-day,  however,  the  professions  are  laying  stress  upon 
their  constructive  as  well  as  their  reconstructive  functions. 
Medicine  is  increasingly  preventive,  concerned  with  the  task 

*  Walter  Lippmann.     New  Republic,  November  12,  1919. 


12         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

of  keeping  people  well  and  raising  health  standards  as  well  as 
with  the  task  of  curing  disease ;  law  is  striving  to  strengthen 
the  conception  of  justice  and  to  make  people  law-abiding 
and  law-respecting  as  well  as  to  punish  law-breakers ;  the 
church  upholds  the  pattern  of  the  righteous  man  rather 
than  the  horrible  example  of  the  sinner ;  the  school  seeks 
not  only  to  bring  the  young  to  the  educational  level  of  their 
elders  but  to  work  through  them  for  a  higher  level.  Posi- 
tively or  negatively,  therefore,  professional  workers  have 
to  do  with  the  maintenance  and  improvement  of  organized 
society  and  the  individuals  composing  it.  Their  primary 
concern  is  always  with  "men  as  men" ;  and  the  profession- 
ally-minded person  keeps  this  idea  alive  under  the  techni- 
calities and  details  of  his  active  professional  work.  He  is 
always  in  a  deep  and  large  sense  a  humanist. 

From  this  point  of  view  of  the  professions  as  agencies  of 
social  regulation  and  improvement,  they  may  be  classified 
as :  ( I )  Professions  directly  regulating  and  improving  human 
behavior,  dealing  directly  with  people:  government,  law, 
the  ministry,  medicine  and  nursing,  teaching,  social  service, 
personnel  service,  other  types  of  applied  psychology.  (2) 
Professions  indirectly  regulating  and  improving  human  be- 
havior through  supplying  the  conditions  for  satisfactory  liv- 
ing: scientific  agriculture  and  forestry,  engineering  in  all 
its  forms,  architecture,  applied  biology,  chemistry,  physics, 
and  mathematics,  scientific  organization,  management,  and 
research.  (3)  Professions  indirectly  regulating  and  improv- 
ing human  behavior  through  supplying  concrete  incentives 
to  thought,  emotion,  and  action:  journalism  and  publishing, 
literature  and  the  other  arts,  religion  in  its  more  personal 
aspects. 

In  any  such  classification  the  overlappings  and  interlac- 
ings  are  obvious,  and  reveal  the  close  and  intricate  pattern 
of  modern  life  and  work.  Government  is  concerned  with 
the  dissemination  of  information  and  with  the  regulation 
of  material  conditions  quite  as  much  as  it  is  with  the  direct 
regulation  of  people.  The  ministry  is  shifting  from  direct 
control  through  constituted  church  authority  to  indirect  con- 
trol through  religious  ideas,  emotions,  and  examples.  Archi- 
tecture stimulates  aesthetic  feeling  as  well  as  providing  ma- 


WHO  ARE  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS?      13 

terial  shelter.  All  the  material  processes  and  operations  of 
modem  life  are  on  so  vast  a  scale  that  multitudes  of  people 
are  occupied  in  the  different  stages  of  making  things  ready 
for  human  use.  The  forester,  the  engineer,  the  chemist, 
have  to  deal  not  only  with  timber  and  machinery  and  chemi- 
cal substances  and  reactions  but  also  with  the  innumerable 
workers  through  whom  these  things  result  in  marketable 
products.  They  have  to  meet  complicated  matters  of  human 
behavior  at  almost  every  turn.  Some  of  the  leading  schools 
of  forestry  and  engineering  are  giving  serious  attention  to 
the  human  aspects  of  these  professions,  the  "behavior  pat- 
terns" and  "behavior  controls"  involved  in  them.  All  pro- 
fessional schools  need  to  do  so,  to  realize  that  every  profes- 
sion has  its  human  and  psychological  side  as  well  as  its 
technical  side.  All  professions  are  social  services,  and  "pro- 
fessional relations"  need  to  be  studied  as  carefully  and  im- 
partially as  industrial  relations. 

This  line  of  thinking  leads  to  three  further  considerations, 
which  can  be  only  presented  here  but  which  will  be  de- 
veloped in  succeeding  chapters.  They  are  (i)  the  extent 
to  which  professional  workers  shall  regulate  the  condi- 
tions of  their  own  employment;  (2)  the  extent  to  which 
professional  workers  shall  regulate  the  conditions  govern- 
ing the  employment  of  other  groups  of  workers,  indus- 
trial and  commercial;  (3)  the  extent  to  which  certain 
workers  in  the  fields  of  industry  and  commerce  are  entitled 
to  be  considered  professional. 

Light  on  the  first  point  is  supplied  by  the  fact  that  the 
professional  worker  is  essentially  a  person  capable  of  as- 
suming responsibility  and  of  forming  independent  judg- 
ments and  plans.  Otherwise  he  is  a  subordinate,  a  "routi- 
neer." With  the  modern  professional  tendency  toward  sal- 
aried positions  and  away  from  independent  practice,  there 
is  a  real  danger  of  loss  of  professional  freedom.  Teachers 
and  government  workers,  two  exclusively  salaried  groups, 
have  long  been  subject  to  this  limitation.  In  both  teaching 
and  government  service,  however,  a  vigorous  movement  is 
on  foot  to  give  the  workers  a  share  in  the  administration 
of  their  institutions,  school  systems,  or  departments.^ 

'  See  National  Education  Association,  Report  of  Council  on  h'a- 


14         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

Light  on  the  second  point  is  supplied  to  a  considerable 
extent  by  what  has  just  been  said.  While  the  expert  has 
never  been  so  greatly  in  demand  in  all  aspects  of  modern 
activity,  he  can  no  longer  do  his  work  successfully  as  an 
autocrat,  but  must  in  some  way  secure  the  intelligent  and 
willing  cooperation  of  the  other  workers  through  whom 
alone  he  is  enabled  to  carry  out  his  plans  and  policies.  Sid- 
ney Webb  said  in  1917  to  a  gathering  of  British  "works 
managers":  "First,  let  me  remind  you  that  you  belong  to 
a  brain-working  profession,  just  as  much  as  do  the  doc- 
tor, the  architect,  the  engineer,  though  your  profession  is 
only  now  becoming  conscious  of  itself  as  a  distinct  pro- 
fession, the  profession  of  management.  .  .  .  What  the  man- 
ager has  principally  to  handle  is  not  wood  or  metal,  but 
human  nature,  not  machinery,  but  wills.  He  will  remain 
for  all  time  an  indispensable  functionary,  whatever  may  be 
the  form  of  society."  ^  H.  L.  Gantt,  the  well-known  indus- 
trial engineer,  has  recently  maintained  that  industry  in  the 
future  must  be  conducted  for  production  and  service  and 
not  primarily  for  profits ;  that  democratic  management  must 
be  in  the  hands  of  the  engineer,  the  professional  man  who 
knows  "what  to  do  and  how  to  do  it."  - 

Light  on  the  third  point  comes  from  the  views  just 
quoted.  In  so  far  as  those  regulating  industrial  and  com- 
mercial enterprises  and  working  for  their  improvement  are 
salaried  experts,  interested  in  efficient  production  and  dis- 
tribution for  the  common  good  rather  than  in  the  accumula- 
tion of  profits;  in  so  far,  even,  as  they  are  owners  and 
proprietors  with  these  qualifications,  they  are  entitled  to 
rank  as  professional  workers.  Both  industry  and  commerce 
have  long  employed  many  persons  belonging  to  recognized 
professions — lawyers,  doctors,  engineers,  accountants,  scien- 
tists. To-day,  they  are  developing  their  own  professions  of 
industrial  management,  commercial  management,  personnel 
management.     They  are  setting  up  their  own  bureaus  of 

tiotml  Emergency  in  Education  (1919);  Report  of  Congressional 
Joint  Commission  on  Reclassification  of  Salaries  in  the  Washington 
Civil  Service   (1920),  pp.  no,   iii. 

^The  Works  Manager  To-Day  (1918),  PP-  2,  4,  5. 

^Organizing  for  Work   (1919). 


WHO  ARE  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS?       15 

commercial  and  industrial  research,  their  own  training  sys- 
tems for  every  type  of  worker.  They  are  cooperating  ac- 
tively with  universities  and  colleges  in  programs  of  both 
training  and  research.  The  Associated  Technology  Clubs  ^ 
have  recently  inaugurated  a  movement  whereby  some  three 
hundred  industrial  corporations  representing  the  major  in- 
dustries of  the  country  are  cooperating  with  a  large  num- 
ber of  higher  institutions  to  "eliminate  educational  waste 
by  drawing  joint  specifications  for  men ;  industries  to  set 
forth  the  qualifications  that  college  graduates  should  have 
and  the  colleges  to  state  their  facilities  for  meeting  these 
needs."  The  Massachusetts  Institute  of  Technology  has 
research  arrangements  with  a  large  group  of  industries. 
Ruskin  long  ago  saw  the  merchant  as  a  professional  work- 
er;^ Glenn  Frank  writes  to-day  on  "Making  Business  a 
Profession."  ^  Industry  and  commerce  conceived  in  these 
terms  may  accordingly  be  included  in  our  second  group  of 
professions,  those  indirectly  regulating  and  improving  hu- 
man behavior  through  supplying  the  material  conditions  for 
satisfactory  living. 

From  the  nature  of  the  professions  as  human  and  social 
services  springs  the  disinterestedness  which  is  at  least  for- 
mally recognized  in  all  codes  of  professional  ethics.  The 
worker  of  true  professional  spirit  will  not  sacrifice  the 
standards  and  reputation  of  his  profession  for  any  personal 
or  partisan  ends.  There  are,  as  has  been  said,  shallow  and 
jealous  and  snobbish  professional  loyalties,  mere  manifes- 
tations of  the  tribal  mind.  But  there  is  also  an  intellectual 
and  moral  devotion  to  the  cause  of  a  chosen  profession  that 
is  loyalty  in  the  sense  in  which  the  term  is  used  by  Josiah 
Royce.  Professions  are  not  coldly  intellectual  pursuits.  It 
is  their  enthusiasm,  their  "devotions  to  impersonal  ends"  * 
that  make  professional  workers  leaders,  creators  in  the 
conscious  remakings  of  human  affairs.  They  are  at  least 
supposed  to  make  their  professional  choices  freely  as  the 

*  See  Hollis  Godfrey.  Cooperation  between  Industry  and  the 
Colleges.    Educational  Reviczv.     June,  1920. 

'  Unto  This  Last.     "The  Roots  of  Honor." 
'  Century  Magazine,  April,   1919. 

*  Walter  Lippmann.     Drift  and  Mastery   (1914),  pp.  27,  28. 


i6         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

result  of  some  native  bent  or  aptitude  and  thus  to  be 
bound  to  them  by  ties  stronger  than  those  of  accident  or 
exigency.  They  do  their  work  at  its  best  for  "the  fun  of  the 
thing."  1 

Because  of  this  disinterested  loyalty  professional  workers 
are  zealous  for  their  own  professional  improvement.  Their 
minds  play  actively  upon  professional  problems,  and  they 
seek  to  make  some  contribution  to  their  solution  or  at  least 
to  fit  themselves  for  progressively  valuable  professional 
service.  It  is  highly  important,  therefore,  that  professional 
workers  keep  themselves  alert  in  these  respects  in  spite  of 
the  drain  and  pressure  of  daily  professional  duties.  Every 
profession  and  not  merely  teaching  should  have  its  "sab- 
batical years,"  its  other  special  leaves  of  absence,  for  profes- 
sional reenforcement  and  development.  By  just  so  far  as 
professional  workers  slip  into  ruts  and  are  content  to  "jog 
along";  by  just  so  far  as  they  become  enmeshed  in  mere 
techniques  and  lose  professional  imagination;  by  just  so  far 
as  they  are  harassed  and  thwarted  by  narrow  circumstances, 
they  fail  to  measure  up  to  the  best  professional  standards, 
and  are  in  danger  of  falling  into  the  class  of  "routineers." 

A  deeply  significant  modern  point  of  view  looks  upon  all 
human  occupations  and  the  modes  of  living  conditioned  by 
them  as  satisfying  or  not  satisfying  fundamental  "instinc- 
tive trends"  and  as  leading  in  many  cases  to  abnormal  "re- 
pressions" or  "baulked  dispositions."  ^  Professional  occu- 
pations are  peculiarly  rich  in  opportunities  for  normal  satis- 
factions, and  under  right  conditions  impose  few  undesirable 
repressions.  They  afford  scope  for  the  exercise  in  various 
"sublimated"  forms  of  most  of  the  instincts  woven  into 
the  pattern  of  human  behavior — the  instinct  of  curiosity, 
the  instinct  of  mental  activity,  the  instinct  of  workman- 
ship, the  instinct  of  leadership,  the  herd  or  fellowship  in- 
stinct, the  instincts  both  of  settling  and  roaming.  If  pro- 
fessional workers  have  scant  chance  for  the  direct  exercise 

*  Trades  and  Professions,  p.   14. 

'See  Thorstein  B.  Veblen,  The  Instinct  of  Workmanship  (1914)  ; 
Graham  Wallas,  The  Great  Society  (1914),  Chapter  4;  Carleton  H. 
Parker,  Motives  in  Economic  Life,  In  Bloomfield's  Employment 
Management  (iQio)  ;  Helen  Marot,  The  Creative  Impulse  in  In- 
dustry (1918)  ;  Ordway  Tead,  Instincts  in  Industry  (1918). 


WHO  ARE  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS?       17 

of  the  instinct  of  acquisitiveness  or  ownership,  they  may 
find  substitutes  in  the  collection  of  data  or  copyrights  or 
favorable  reviews.  For  the  hunting  and  fighting  instincts, 
they  have  the  excitements  of  proving  a  hypothesis,  of  plan- 
ning a  building  or  a  campaign,  of  conquering  a  disease — all 
the  moral  equivalents  of  war  so  incomparably  set  forth  by 
William  James. ^  Beyond  most  people  living  and  working 
under  modern  conditions,  professional  workers  have  both 
an  opportunity  and  an  obligation  to  become  adequate  human 
beings,^  free  from  "personality  and  conduct  disorders." 

In  fact,  it  is  scarcely  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  the  true 
professional  worker  in  any  field,  whether  he  be  doctor, 
teacher,  engineer,  scientist,  "social  worker,"  or  business  ex- 
ecutive intelligently  shouldering  responsibility,  has  in  him 
something  of  the  artist,  the  maker.  He  knows  the  joy  of 
craftmanship,  the  play  of  constructive  imagination,  the  emo- 
tional tingle  that  accompanies  the  endeavor  to  embody  an 
idea  in  concrete  form,  the  glow  and  heightened  sense  of  life 
and  capacity  that  mark  the  accomplishment  of  a  delicate  and 
difficult  piece  of  work  well  done  and  recognized  as  such  by 
fellow-workers.  In  such  experiences  and  such  satisfactions 
lie  his  greatest  rewards. 

'Memories  and  Studies  (1911).  "The  Moral  Equivalent  of  War." 
See  also  in  the  same  volume,  "The  Social  Value  of  the  College- 
Bred." 


CHAPTER  II 

WOMEN    AS   PROFESSIONAL    WORKERS 

Women  in  particular  at  this  juncture  need  to  take  stock 
of  their  professional  situation  and  prospects.  The  past  five 
or  six  years  have  undoubtedly  done  much  to  advance  and 
define  their  professional  status.  New  doors  have  been  set 
ajar  and  old  doors  set  wider  open.  They  stand  at  the  be- 
ginning of  a  period  which  may  be  notable  for  their  profes- 
sional as  well  as  their  political  enfranchisement  and  prog- 
ress. But  it  is  no  time  for  easy  optimism  nor  for  relaxed 
effort.  There  is  considerable  reaction  from  the  professional 
hospitalities  extended  during  the  war;  and  women  who 
worked  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  men  are  discovering  that 
the  masculine  shoulder  may  again  be  coldly  turned.  It  is  a 
time  rather  for  women  to  think  clearly  and  resolutely  about 
the  requirements  and  obligations  of  professional  life;  to 
recognize  that  they  cannot  expect  at  the  same  time  full  pro- 
fessional recognition  and  the  full  privileges  of  leisure.  They 
must  admit  frankly  that  even  to-day  they  are  far  less  fully 
and  unequivocally  professional  than  men  and  in  many  fields 
still  professional  beginners.  They  have  special  problems  of 
their  own  to  meet  and  solve,  such  as  the  bask  problem  of 
combining  a  professional  career  with  marriage  and  parent- 
hood. In  addition,  they  will  have  to  forge  ahead  for  some 
time  to  come  against  a  professional  psychology  which  for- 
gets all  about  them  even  more  frequently  than  it  objects 
to  them,  and  is  prone  to  include  all  women  in  certain  sweep- 
ing generalizations: — that  the  prospect  of  marriage  makes 
them  a  shifting  and  undependable  labor  supply;  that  they 
are  not  willing  to  stand  squarely  on  their  record  as  workers, 
but  evade  responsibility  for  mistakes  by  falling  back  on  the 
personal  and  social ;  that  they  lack  group  spirit  and  group 
standards ;  that  they  are  detail-minded  and  not  plan-minded ; 

i8 


WOMEN  AS  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS      19 

that  they  are  more  appropriately  assistants  and  substitutes 
than  directors  and  organizers — a  sort  of  innately  secretarial 
sex. 

Professional  women  will  disprove  assertions  of  this  kind 
— which  contain  an  element  of  truth — not  so  much  by  point- 
ing out  that  they  rest  largely  on  a  confusion  between  "stop- 
gap" workers  and  professional  workers,  and  that  individual 
differences  are  immeasurably  greater  than  sex  differences,'- 
as  by  displaying  professional  competence  and  tenacity  of  a 
high  order  and  by  refusing  to  accept  either  privileges  or  dis- 
abilities on  the  ground  of  sex.  For  the  present,  since  they 
are  helping  to  establish  the  professional  position  of  women, 
they  are  called  upon  to  demonstrate  courage  and  stability  to 
an  even  greater  extent  than  men  of  the  same  professional 
equipment  and  at  the  same  time  to  avoid  the  pitfalls  of  sex 
rivalry  or  sex  exploitation.  In  the  long  run,  they  will  suc- 
ceed in  proportion  to  the  extent  to  which  they  meet  pro- 
fessional standards  as  workers  and  citizens  and  not  as 
women,  while  recognizing  that  these  standards  are  not  final 
revelations  but  part  of  a  group  process,  to  which  they  have 
something  to  contribute.  The  professional  groups  of  the 
future,  far  more  than  of  the  past,  will  be  composed  of  both 
men  and  women,  and  their  standards  and  policies  will  be 
shaped  by  both.  Just  what  changes  and  distributions  of 
effort  this  will  bring  about  remain  to  be  seen,  although  they 
will  undoubtedly  arise.  Present  opinions  are  based  on  far 
too  slender  an  array  of  fact  and  experience  to  be  of  much 
value.  But  it  is  highly  important  to  remember  in  this  con- 
nection that  a  profession  is  not  merely  an  intellectual  ac- 
quirement but  a  way  of  life  involving  many  instinctive  and 
emotional  adjustments.  Women  as  relative  newcomers  will 
have  to  make  these  adjustments  in  larger  measure  than  men, 
and  at  the  same  time  to  modify  in  more  respects  their  social 
and  personal  arrangements.  The  next  few  years  will  re- 
quire large-mindedness  and  patience  and  imaginative  insight 
on  the  part  of  both  men  and  women  in  the  professions. 
But  there  is  every  hope  that  mutual  tolerance  and  under- 
standing and  goodwill  will  grow  out  of  a  closer  association 

*See  H.  L.  Hollingworth,  Vocational  Psychology  (1916),  Chap- 
ter 10. 


20         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

in  common  objective  efforts,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the 
professional  group,  like  the  family  group,  contains  within 
itself  tendencies  toward  antagonism  as  well  as  toward  co- 
operation. 

Meanwhile,  the  indirect  gains  of  professional  women 
from  the  war  period  are  greater  than  the  direct  gains,  and 
are  largely  psychological.  Women  are  thinking  of  them- 
selves as  professional  workers,  and  men  are  thinking  about 
them,  with  a  new  seriousness  and  a  new  vividness.  Even 
their  discovery  that  they  are  not  so  important  as  they 
thought  themselves  to  be  during  the  war  puts  them  upon 
their  professional  mettle.  This  new  professional  aware- 
ness of  women  comes  fortunately  at  a  time  when  the  world 
is  considering  as  never  before  the  relations  of  all  groups 
of  workers  to  one  another  and  their  respective  contributions 
to  a  just,  decent,  and  satisfactory  social  order;  it  is,  indeed, 
one  of  its  manifestations,  since  women  in  general  have  been 
among  the  "forgotten  groups."  It  comes  fortunately  also 
just  when  the  professions  themselves  are  acquiring  an  un- 
precedented public  importance  and  a  new  flexibility  of  mind. 

A  real  psychological  advantage  of  women  going  into  the 
professions  in  the  present  troubled  and  unstable  period  lies 
in  the  fact  that  they  confront  its  difficulties  and  possibili- 
ties with  a  freshness  and  disinterestedness  that  to  some  ex- 
tent compensate  for  their  inexperience  in  the  world  of  af- 
fairs. They  deal  with  the  situation  in  hand,  unhampered  by 
old  professional  and  political  and  business  entanglements,  by 
catchwords  and  conventions  that  clog  thinking  and  impede 
action.  Their  professional  innocence  is  a  reai  asset  if  it  be 
free  from  an  undue  docility  and  timidity  on  the  one  hand 
and  an  airy  self-confidence  on  the  other.  Most  of  all  will 
it  be  an  asset  if  it  enable  women  to  avoid  professional  pom- 
posity and  to  acquire  the  real  spirit  of  craftsmanship,  respect 
for  the  work  to  be  done,  whatever  it  is,  and  for  fellow 
workers,  which  is  at  the  bottom  of  all  worthy  self-respect 
and  social  usefulness. 

Professional  women  need  to  gain  perspective  and  back- 
ground by  thinking  of  themselves  as  workers  among  other 
groups  of  workers  and  by  measuring  themselves  against 
men  as  well  as  women.     Just  now  it  is  impossible  to  do 


WOMEN  AS  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS      21 

this  fairly  by  means  of  statistics,  since  our  only  available 
census  figures  are  ten  years  old,  and  conspicuous  changes 
in  the  position  of  women  workers  have  occurred  within  the 
decade.  Moreover,  the  professional  classification  of  the 
1910  census  is  as  mysterious  in  its  inclusions  as  in  its  omis- 
sions. Nevertheless  a  few  citations  may  be  suggestive  and 
convenient  for  comparison  with  the  1920  figures  when  they 
appear. 

In  1910  over  80  per  cent  of  all  males  ten  years  of  age 
and  over  were  in  gainful  occupations ;  over  23  per  cent  of 
all  females.  In  the  thirty  years  between  1880  and  1910, 
the  percentage  of  men  employed  increased  only  a  little  more 
than  3  per  cent ;  the  percentage  of  women  58  per  cent. 
Of  all  persons  engaged  in  gainful  occupations,  21.2  per 
cent,  or  more  than  one  in  five,  were  women,  ranging  from 
I  per  cent  in  mining  to  67.1  per  cent  in  domestic  and  per- 
sonal service.  The  percentage  of  women  workers  varied 
considerably  in  different  sections  of  the  country,  being  high- 
est in  the  industrial  states  of  New  England  and  in  the  agri- 
cultural south,  where  colored  women  work  in  the  fields.  All 
told,  there  were  in  1910  over  eight  million  women  in  gainful 
occupations,  including  women  doing  outdoor  work  on  home 
farms  but  not  including  women  doing  their  own  housework, 
A  recent  estimate  places  the  number  of  wage-earning 
women  at  approximately  eleven  millions,  eight  millions  of 
whom  are  between  fourteen  and  twenty-one  years  of  age. 

Of  the  eight  million  women  workers  in  1910,  733,885,  or 
8.3  per  cent,  as  against  only  3.8  per  cent  of  men  workers, 
were  listed  as  professional.  Women  formed  44.1  per  cent  of 
the  total  professional  group,  a  more  nearly  equal  number 
of  men  and  women  than  in  any  other  large  occupational 
division.  Professional  men  and  women  together,  however, 
formed  only  4.8  per  cent  of  all  workers.  Any  elation  at 
the  proportionally  larger  number  of  women  in  the  profes- 
sional group  is  quickly  dissipated  by  the  discovery  that  the 
bulk  of  women  professional  workers  were  actors,  authors, 
artists  and  teachers  of  art,  musicians  and  teachers  of  music, 
school  teachers,  and  trained  nurses,  the  very  occupations  in 
which  professional  standards  are  most  elastic.  In  the  other 
occupational  divisions,  12.9  per  cent  of  the  workers  in  trade 


22         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

were  women;  16.6  per  cent  of  the  workers  in  agriculture; 
17.1  per  cent  of  the  workers  in  manufacturing  industry ;  34.2 
per  cent  of  the  workers  in  clerical  service.  Between  1880 
and  1910  the  figures  show  a  steady  decrease  in  the  percent- 
ages of  women  employed  in  unskilled  and  personal  services 
and  a  steady  increase  in  the  percentages  employed  in  skilled, 
clerical,  and  professional  services.  The  census  of  1920  may 
be  expected  to  present  much  more  startling  evidence  of  the 
emergence  of  women  from  the  ranks  of  the  unskilled. 

In  1 9 10  the  percentage  groupings  of  women  in  the  vari- 
ous occupations  classified  under  professional  service  were 
as  follows :  Of  architects,  chemists,  clergymen,  draftsmen, 
engineers,  and  lawyers,  less  than  i  per  cent  were  women ; 
of  doctors  and  dentists,  less  than  10  per  cent;  of  college 
presidents  and  teachers,  designers,  editors  and  reporters,  less 
than  25  per  cent;  of  actors,  artists  and  sculptors,  authors, 
and  teachers  of  athletics  and  dancing,  less  than  50  per  cent ; 
of  musicians  and  teachers  of  music,  religious  and  charity 
workers,  school  teachers,  and  trained  nurses,  more  than  50 
per  cent.  Eighty  per  cent  of  teachers  and  92  per  cent  of 
trained  nurses  were  women.  The  classification  does  not 
recognize  professional  librarians,  accountants,  actuaries,  or 
statisticians ;  it  provides  inadequately  for  many  types  of 
scientist  and  engineer;  it  relegates  social  workers  to  semi- 
professional  pursuits  under  the  headings  "religious  and 
charity  workers"  and  "keepers  of  charitable  and  penal 
institutions,"  where  they  are  in  strange  company  with  for- 
tune-tellers, hypnotists,  theatrical  owners  and  managers;  it 
has  no  place  for  experts  in  industrial  and  commercial  man- 
agement. In  view  of  these  and  other  inadequacies,  it  is  dis- 
couraging to  learn  from  the  Federal  Bureau  of  the  Census 
that  no  important  changes  have  been  made  in  the  Four- 
teenth Census  in  the  list  of  occupations  given  under  profes- 
sional service. 

The  rates  of  increase  of  men  and  women  in  some  of  the 
professions  during  the  thirty  years  between  1880  and  1910 
are  worth  noting.  In  law,  the  number  of  men  nearly 
doubled ;  the  number  of  women  increased  nearly  eighteen- 
fold,  from  75  to  1,343.  In  medicine,  men  gained  by  about 
two-thirds ;    women   five-fold.      Men     dentists    more   than 


WOMEN  AS  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS      23 

trebled ;  women  dentists  increased  twenty-fold.  Men  archi- 
tects increased  nearly  five- fold ;  women  architects  seven- 
teen-fold,  although  in  actual  numbers  only  from  17  to  302. 
Men  journalists  were  two  and  a  half  times  as  numerous  in 
1910  as  in  i88o;  women  journalists  were  fourteen  times  as 
numerous. 

A  census  of  college  women  taken  in  1915  under  the  aus- 
pices of  the  Association  of  Collegiate  Alumnae/  and  includ- 
ing 16,739  graduates  of  eight  eastern  colleges  for  women 
and  Cornell  University,  showed  that  67.7  per  cent  of  these 
women  had  been  at  some  time  in  gainful  occupations,  and 
that  42.7  per  cent  were  so  engaged  in  1915.  Of  those  at  any 
time  employed,  83.5  per  cent  were  teachers;  22  per  cent 
were  in  other  occupations.  Of  those  at  work  when  the  cen- 
sus was  taken,  70.3  per  cent  were  teachers;  29.7  per  cent 
were  in  other  occupations.  Of  employed  women  graduating 
from  college  between  the  years  1880  and  1890,  27.5  per 
cent  were  in  non-teaching  occupations ;  of  women  graduat- 
ing between  1910  and  1915,  34.5  per  cent.  In  the  1910  cen- 
sus 65.6  per  cent  of  the  women  classified  as  professional, 
were  school  and  college  teachers ;  34.4  per  cent  were 
in  other  occupations.  Among  the  teachers  in  the  college 
census,  30  per  cent  had  done  graduate  work  of  an  academic 
character ;  among  the  non-teaching  group,  only  14.3  per 
cent.  Of  this  last  group,  however,  38.9  per  cent  had  taken 
special  professional  or  vocational  training.  Of  950  women, 
30.5  per  cent  reported  training  after  graduation  in  social 
work ;  29.4  per  cent  in  secretarial  work ;  22  per  cent  in  medi- 
cine ;  9.2  per  cent  in  nursing,  and  9  per  cent  in  law.  It  is 
to  be  hoped  that  this  census  of  college  women  may  be 
taken  again  in  1925  and  may  include  women  graduates  of 
coeducational  institutions.  Perhaps  by  that  time  it  may  be 
possible  also  to  make  some  comparisons  with  a  similar 
group  of  college  men.  The  occupational  facts  of  the  decade 
between  191 5  and  1925  are  sure  to  yield  conclusions  of 
exceptional  value. 

Of  more  direct  importance  to  women  planning  to  become 
professional  workers  are  their  facilities  for  securing  thor- 

*  Mary_  Van  Kleeck,  A  Census  of  College  Women.  Journal  of 
Association  of  Collegiate  Alumna,  May,  1918. 


24         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

ough  professional  education.  Most  of  the  professional 
schools  of  high  standing  are  now  open  to  them.  The  past 
two  years  have  seen  the  bars  let  down  by  the  medical  schools 
connected  with  Harvard,  Columbia,  and  Washington  Uni- 
versity in  Saint  Louis,  and  by  the  American  Institute  of 
Banking.  Among  law  schools  of  the  first  rank,  Harvard 
and  Columbia  stand  practically  alone  in  refusing  to  admit 
them.  Cornell  University,  the  Massachusetts  Institute  of 
Technology,  the  state  universities  and  schools  of  agricul- 
ture and  mechanic  arts,  afiford  opportunities  of  the  best  for 
engineering  and  other  forms  of  technical  and  scientific  train- 
ing. University  schools  of  education,  journalism,  business 
administration,  and  salesmanship  very  generally  admit  them 
freely.  Women  students  predominate  in  the  schools  of 
social  work.  Several  institutions  for  women  of  the  type 
of  Simmons  College  in  Boston  provide  a  four  years'  col- 
lege course  combining  liberal  and  professional  education. 
Bryn  Mawr  College  offers  graduate  work  of  a  professional 
character  in  social  and  industrial  services,  and  Smith  Col- 
lege is  working  toward  the  same  end  by  another  route.  In 
fact,  in  the  past,  there  have  been  more  opportunities  for 
professional  training  formally  open  to  women  than  there 
have  been  women  ready  to  avail  themselves  of  them.  This 
has  been  conspicuously  true  in  coeducational  and  state- 
supported  institutions.  But  there  have  nevertheless  been 
very  real  barriers  of  a  psychological  sort  in  the  professional 
schools  in  which  men  predominate  and  in  which  the  instruc- 
tion and  field  practice  have  been  organized  with  only  men 
in  mind.  In  some  of  the  newer  fields,  women  will  have 
to  emulate  for  a  time  the  courage  of  the  pioneer  women  in 
medicine. 

But  even  in  these  fields,  they  will  be  reinforced  by  the  new 
professional  courage  and  initiative  gained  by  women  during 
the  war  period  and  by  the  amazing  extension  of  interest  in 
higher  and  professional  education  which  is  manifesting  itself 
both  in  the  United  States  and  in  Great  Britain,  and  which 
is  as  great  among  employers  as  among  the  new  generation 
of  students.  This  interest  is  predominatingly  due  to  the 
signal  services  of  professional  experts  during  the  war  and 
to  the  realization  that  the  types  of  men  and  women  most 


WOMEN  AS  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS      25 

needed  can  be  supplied  only  through  prolonged  and  appro- 
priate courses  of  training.  Chemists,  engineers,  public- 
health  doctors  and  nurses,  food  producers  and  conservators, 
employment  or  personnel  managers,  industrial  and  trade 
research  workers  and  statisticians,  community  workers, 
"Americanization"  workers,  psychiatric  social  workers,  oc- 
cupation therapists,  have  all  been  in  the  public  eye.  Their 
very  titles  are  in  some  cases  novel.  The  intensive  courses 
of  training  for  war  services  given  by  government  depart- 
ments, by  educational  institutions,  and  by  large  business 
corporations  have  both  widened  the  range  of  professional 
training  and  demonstrated  the  results  of  new  methods, 
which  are  being  incorporated  into  the  educational  system. 
Colleges,  universities,  and  professional  schools  are  crowded 
as  never  before,  and  extension  courses  are  in  such  demand 
that  they  furnish  a  social  challenge  to  all  higher  institu- 
tions. But  it  must  be  remembered  that  all  this  is  only  an 
acceleration  of  a  movement  in  progress  for  a  generation. 
The  reports  of  the  United  States  Commissioner  of  Educa- 
tion show  that  between  1900  and  1916  the  attendance  of 
men  upon  higher  educational  institutions  more  than  trebled ; 
the  attendance  of  women  more  than  quadrupled.  Of  the 
95,cx)0  women  students  in  1915-1916,  about  three-fourths 
were  in  coeducational  institutions.  Practically  twice  as 
many  women  were  graduated  in  that  year  as  in  1907,  ten 
years  before.  In  1915-1916,  women  received  about  two- 
thirds  as  many  bachelors'  degrees  as  men  and  about  half 
as  many  masters'  degrees.  But  with  respect  to  the  degree 
of  doctor  of  philosophy  and  scientific  and  professional  de- 
grees, they  still  fell  far  behind. 

A  striking  manifestation  of  the  new  interest  in  profes- 
sional education  is  the  multiplication  of  fellowships  and 
scholarships  to  promote  study  along  vocational  lines. 
Women  need  to  be  particularly  alert  to  these  opportunities 
and  to  see  that  qualified  women  receive  them  in  suitable 
proportion,  and  that  whenever  new  funds  are  provided, 
the  interests  of  women  are  duly  recognized.  The  numerous 
scholarships  for  discharged  soldiers  established  by  the  War- 
Work  Organizations  and  by  the  American  Legion  illustrate 
the  present  tendency,  and  are  a  direct  outgrowth  of  the 


26         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

educational  work  undertaken  for  the  American  forces  over- 
seas. The  recently  established  Institute  of  International 
Education  is  administering  a  number  of  exchange  fellow- 
ships in  foreign  universities,  particularly  in  France  and 
Scandinavia,  open  to  men  and  women;  the  National  Re- 
search Council  with  the  aid  of  the  Rockefeller  Founda- 
tion is  offering  fellowships  to  persons  prepared  to  carry 
on  advanced  scientific  and  industrial  research ;  the  Research 
Bureau  for  Retail  Training  of  the  Carnegie  Institute  pro- 
vides eight  fellowships ;  commercial  and  industrial  associa- 
tions are  extending  their  policy  of  maintaining  at  univer- 
sities research  fellowships  in  subjects  pertaining  to  their 
special  interests;  the  New  School  for  Social  Research  is 
seeking  to  establish  fellowships  with  a  substantial  stipend 
for  political  and  economic  research;  the  American  Red 
Cross  has  appropriated  $100,000  for  public  health  scholar- 
ships for  graduate  nurses  who  have  been  in  war  service ; 
the  Women's  Farm  and  Garden  Association  is  giving  schol- 
arships in  agricultural  colleges  for  women  who  were  mem- 
bers of  the  Women's  Land  Army  or  who  did  other  war 
work  on  the  land ;  various  agencies  are  providing  graduate 
scholarships  and  fellowships  for  physicians. 

There  are,  besides,  older  fellowship  opportunities  to 
which  v/omen  are  eligible  and  a  few  especially  for  them. 
The  Women's  Educational  and  Industrial  Union  of  Boston 
offers  three  fellowships  in  economic  and  industrial  research ; 
the  Intercollegiate  Community  Service  Association,  formerly 
the  College  Settlements  Association,  three  in  social  and 
community  service.  Vassar  and  Smith  each  has  a  vocational 
fellowship  open  to  its  own  graduates.  The  Association 
of  Collegiate  Alumnae  administers  the  Sarah  Berliner  Re- 
search Fellowship  in  Science  and  other  vocational  fellow- 
ships. Bryn  Mawr  College  provides  several  Carola  Woeris- 
hoffer  fellowships  in  social  research ;  Swarthmore  College 
has  the  Martha  E.  Tyson  fellowship  for  women  teachers. 
The  University  of  California  has  the  Preston  School  of 
Industry  fellowships  for  research  in  agriculture,  law,  politi- 
cal science,  social  economics,  applied  psychology,  and  medi- 
cine, open  to  men  and  women.  The  New  York  School  of 
Social  Work  and  similar  schools  offer  special  fellowships; 


WOMEN  AS  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS      27 

and  schools  of  public  health  and  industrial  medicine  are 
doing  likewise.  Nearly  all  professional  schools  offer  fellow- 
ships and  scholarships  of  some  kind;  and  fellowships  in 
academic  graduate  schools  have  a  professional  bearing  on 
teaching,  social  and  economic  service,  applied  psychology, 
and  applied  science.  It  has  been  suggested  that  the  federal 
government  establish  fellowships  for  research  in  connection 
with  government  departments.  Many  organizations  and  in- 
dividuals are  making  special  grants  for  research  to  be  car- 
ried on  in  colleges  and  universities. 

Closely  allied  to  the  provision  of  fellowships  is  the  recent 
establishment  through  endowment  or  through  cooperative 
or  individual  effort  of  a  number  of  institutions  for  special 
types  of  work  or  for  special  groups  of  workers.  Among 
these  may  be  mentioned  the  Juillard  and  Eastman  music 
foundations,  the  Louis  Comfort  Tiffany  Art  Foundation, 
the  New  School  for  Social  Research,  the  Babson  Institute 
for  Training  in  Business  Fundamentals,  the  trade  union 
colleges  in  Boston,  Washington,  Chicago,  and  elsewhere. 
Most  of  these  institutions  are  explicitly  or  implicitly  open 
to  women,  or  announce  that  they  will  be  "as  soon  as  prac- 
ticable." 

Professional  women  need  to  take  a  lively  interest  in 
these  newer  educational  enterprises,  to  participate  in  them 
whenever  possible,  and  to  share  in  the  shaping  of  them  to 
sound  and  democratic  ends.  They  need  to  see  that  the  free 
interests  of  women  students  are  provided  for  in  the  pres- 
sure of  numbers  upon  the  colleges  and  universities ;  above 
all,  that  higher  educational  opportunities  for  women  be 
made  as  democratically  open  to  all  social  and  economic 
groups  as  they  have  been  made  for  men  through  the  pro- 
visions for  returned  soldiers.  Women  can  do  no  better 
work  for  education  and  for  the  community  than  to  establish 
scholarships  and  fellowships  for  women  in  a  wide  range 
of  professional  fields  and  to  stimulate  the  attendance  upon 
colleges  and  professional  schools  of  women  from  the  in- 
dustries, trades,  and  distributive  occupations.  The  school 
for  active  workers  of  the  Women's  Trade  Union  League 
has  made  beginnings  in  this  direction.  A  system  of  ex- 
change of  students  between  the  academic  colleges  and  the 


28         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

trade-union  colleges  would  be  a  valuable  experiment.  And 
the  academic  colleges  might  well  be  used  during  the  summer 
vacations  to  provide  special  educational  facilities  for  indus- 
trial and  clerical  workers. 

Professional  women  should  likewise  at  the  beginning  of 
this  new  period  give  serious  thought  to  the  matter  of  pro- 
fessional associations  of  various  types :  those  not  admit- 
ting women ;  those  admitting  women  but  organized  and 
controlled  by  men ;  those  separately  organized  and  con- 
trolled by  women ;  and  those  cooperatively  organized  and 
controlled  by  men  and  women  together.  Women  are  com- 
monly supposed  not  to  be  a  "clubbable  sex."  They  are 
indeed  only  just  coming  to  recognize  the  value  of  associa- 
tions as  a  means  of  fostering  professional  spirit  and  main- 
taining and  raising  professional  standards.  But  their  pres- 
ent relative  detachment  gives  them  a  chance  to  study  the 
activities  of  such  bodies  and  to  find  out  to  what  extent 
they  genuinely  serve  the  profession  and  the  community;  to 
what  extent  they  merely  encourage  the  spirit  of  exclusive- 
ness  and  prestige. 

It  is  commonly  assumed  that  women  should  seek  mem- 
bership in  the  men's  associations  which  their  professional 
affiliations  entitle  them  to  enter.  Many  women  so  doing 
have  been  at  least  outwardly  satisfied  with  mere  member- 
ship, and  have  timorously  and  uncomfortably  attended  meet- 
ings in  which  they  have  taken  no  part,  and  in  which  they 
have  been  ignored  and  sometimes  discriminated  against,  in- 
tentionally or  unintentionally.  But  the  modern  profes- 
sional woman  is  not  timorous,  and  this  sort  of  thing  is 
undoubtedly  passing.  For  the  present,  however,  there  is  a 
good  deal  to  be  said  in  favor  of  retaining  the  various  types 
of  professional  association  and  using  now  one  and  now 
another  as  it  seems  the  fittest  instrument  for  accomplishing 
a  definite  end.  There  is  still  some  danger  of  women  becom- 
ing mere  "paper  members"  of  organizations  in  the  direction 
of  which  they  have  no  real  voice ;  and  it  is  often  the  part 
of  practical  wisdom  for  women  to  organize  a  separate 
association  and  thus  to  gain  confidence  and  experience  that 
will  win  a  hearing  in  later  joint  associations.  Having 
shown  what  they  can  do.  such  bodies  are  frequently  urged 


WOMEN  AS  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS      29 

to  share  in  forming  a  single  organization.  Separate  asso- 
ciations of  women  are  thus  far  more  a  means  of  education 
in  managing  affairs  than  they  are  manifestations  of  a  sep- 
aratist and  feminist  spirit.  The}'  represent  merely  a  stage 
in  the  professional  evolution  of  women;  and  the  ideal 
toward  which  to  work  is  assuredly  the  single  professional 
association  with  women  as  officers  and  committee  members 
as  well  as  in  the  silent  rank  and  file.  Work  for  the  suffrage 
and  war  service  have  done  much  to  destroy  the  popular 
superstition  that  women  lack  the  power  to  shape  policies, 
meet  emergencies,  and  carry  out  programs. 

The  position  of  women  as  members  of  associations  varies 
greatly  in  the  different  professions.  If  they  are  numerous 
in  the  profession,  or  if  the  profession  itself  has  recently 
developed,  they  commonly  have  full  membership  and  a 
more  or  less  assured  status,  as  in  teaching,  social  work, 
library  work,  and  employment  or  personnel  management. 
The  presidents  and  other  officers  of  national  associations 
in  these  fields  have  not  uncommonly  been  women ;  and  they 
have  served  on  executive  committees  and  boards  of  direc- 
tors. But  even  here  men  hold  for  the  most  part  the  execu- 
tive positions. 

In  other  professions  there  are  separate  associations  and 
joint  associations ;  sometimes  both.  Women  doctors  have 
a  Medical  Women's  National  Association ;  and  may  also 
become  members  of  the  American  Medical  Association.  Bar 
associations  have  been  cold  to  women  lawyers,  who  have 
their  own  Women  Lawyers'  Association,  with  branches  in 
thirty-four  states.  Many  legal  women,  however,  prefer  to 
seek  membership  in  their  local  bar  associations.  The  Amer- 
ican Bar  Association  has  only  recently  admitted  women.  It 
was  a  pleasant  irony  to  have  the  Association  of  the  Bar 
of  New  York  City,  which  is  closed  to  women,  recently 
endorse  without  qualification  the  candidacy  of  a  well-known 
woman  lawyer  for  the  office  of  municipal  judge.  News- 
paper women  have  press  clubs  and  press  associations  of 
their  own;  and  there  is  a  League  of  American  Penwomen. 
A  Women's  National  Book  Association  has  recently  been 
organized,  to  which  women  are  eligible  who  are  in  any 
way   concerned   with   the   publication    and   distribution    of 


30         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

books.  There  are  leagues  and  clubs  of  advertising  women 
in  ten  states ;  and  women  are  admitted  to  some  of  the 
men's  associations.  Massachusetts  and  New  York  have 
associations  of  insurance  women ;  but  for  the  most  part 
women  belong  freely  to  the  men's  insurance  organizations. 
There  is  a  national  Woman's  Chamber  of  Commerce,  with 
local  branches;  but  the  men's  chambers  are  in  many  cases 
admitting  women  to  membership.  The  National  Associa- 
tion of  Women  Painters  and  Sculptors  is  well  known. 

Professional  women  are  coming  also  to  recognize  their 
public  responsibilities  as  members  of  school-boards  and 
boards  of  trustees  or  directors  of  colleges,  hospitals,  librar- 
ies, and  other  institutions  for  public  service.  In  a  number 
of  states,  notably  in  Massachusetts  and  Illinois,  and  more 
recently  in  New  York,  as  well  as  commonly  in  the  far 
west,  they  have  served  important  public  boards  and  com- 
missions both  as  unpaid  members  and  as  paid  executives. 
Through  the  Association  of  Collegiate  Alumnae,  college 
women  are  represented  in  the  new  American  Council  on 
Education,  which  has  a  special  committee  on  training  women 
for  professional  service.  They  are  likewise  represented  in 
the  new  Institute  of  International  Education,  which  arranges 
for  the  exchange  of  teachers  and  students  between  American 
and  foreign  institutions  and  in  other  ways  furthers  interna- 
tional educational  understanding  and  good  will.  Profes- 
sional women  have  serious  obligations  with  reference  to 
other  organizations  of  women,  such  as  the  National  and 
International  Councils  of  Women,  the  General  Federation  of 
Women's  Clubs,  the  League  of  Women  Voters,  and  the 
Women's  Trade  Union  League. 

Since  the  war  there  has  been  a  marked  interest  in  pro- 
fessional organization  and  cooperation.  The  program  of  the 
Inter-Professional  Conference  meeting  in  Detroit  in  No- 
vember, 1919,  has  been  given  in  Chapter  i.  It  was  initiated 
by  the  post-war  committee  on  architectural  practice,  and 
representative  professional  women  were  invited  to  attend, 
and  are  serving  on  committees  to  plan  further  development. 
A  National  Federation  of  Business  and  Professional 
Women's  Clubs  has  been  established  through  the  good  of- 
fices of  the  National  Board  of  Young  Women's  Christian 


WOMEN  AS  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS      31 

Associations,  although  not  under  its  direct  auspices.  It  is 
organized  in  most  of  the  states,  and  has  held  two  enthusias- 
tic and  largely  attended  annual  conferences.  Shortly  after 
the  signing  of  the  armistice,  the  War-Emergency  United 
States  Employment  Service  completed  the  organization  of  a 
professional  section  for  both  men  and  women  workers, 
the  operation  of  which  was  practically  suspended  when 
Congress  failed  to  establish  the  Employment  Service  on  an 
adequate  permanent  basis.  In  January,  1920,  the  National 
Committee  of  Bureaus  of  Occupations  for  Trained  Women 
held  a  conference  in  New  York  attended  by  men  and  women 
representing  universities  and  colleges,  professional  associa- 
tions, and  professional  employment  bureaus,  to  discuss  the 
subject  of  a  nation-wide  professional  employment  service 
under  non-governmental  auspices.  A  conspicuous  current 
movement  is  the  formation  of  an  increasing  number  of  pro- 
fessional unions  affiliated  with  the  American  Federation  of 
Labor  and  representing  especially  college  professors,  school 
teachers,  librarians,  and  journalists.  A  similar  movement  is 
going  on  in  Great  Britain.  The  Federal  Employees'  Union, 
of  several  years'  standing,  includes  in  its  membership  many 
scientists  and  other  professional  experts  in  the  service  of 
the  government. 

The  relations  of  professional  women  to  marriage  and 
parenthood  is  a  topic  in  too  unsettled  and  transitional  a  state 
to  admit  of  more  than  brief  consideration.  There  are  still 
many  minds  on  the  subject;  and  the  whole  matter  is  bound 
up  with  a  changing  psychology  of  the  family  both  with 
respect  to  its  own  members  and  to  the  larger  social  group. 
But  it  is  no  longer  taken  as  a  matter  of  course  that  women 
will  entirely  give  up  their  professional  work  when  they  , 
marry,  and  hence  cannot  expect  to  receive  serious  profes- 
sional consideration.  A  growing  number  of  professional 
married  couples — most  of  them  young — are  working  out 
the  problem  together,  and  making  a  genuine  contribution  to 
social  adjustment.  The  question  for  many  women  to-day 
is  not  so  much  ai  choice  between  a  profession  and  mar- 
riage as  the  question  of  how  they  may  combine  a  profes- 
sion and  marriage  with  justice  and  profit  to  all  concerned. 
There  are  still  many  difficulties,  some  inherent,  some  tlie 


32         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

product  of  social  and  economic  conventions.  But  there 
seems  a  prospect  that  more  rather  than  fewer  profes- 
sional women  will  marry,  and  that  it  will  no  longer  be 
exceptional  for  a  married  woman  to  continue  her  profes- 
sional career,  and  will  even  be  a  matter  of  course  so  long 
as  she  is  childless  and  after  her  children  have  reached 
school  age.  Women  doctors,  lawyers,  and  other  indepen- 
dent practitioners  have  for  many  years  found  marriage  not 
incompatible  with  carrying  on  their  professional  activities. 
An  increasing  number  of  women  teachers  continue  their 
work  after  marriage.'^  The  flexibility  of  professional  work 
as  compared  with  clerical  or  industrial  work  facilitates 
such  continuance  in  many  fields.  The  tendency  since  the 
war  toward  the  development  of  "group  practice"  and  "con- 
sulting services"  suggests  one  type  of  adaptation.  Part-time 
work  is  another.  The  distributions  of  work  and  leisure 
are  changing  for  both  men  and  women. 

Economic  pressure  is  undoubtedly  helping  to  stimulate 
newer  ways  of  thinking  about  professional  women  and  mar- 
riage. Increased  costs  of  living  bear  nowhere  so  heavily  as 
upon  the  salaried  groups,  clerical  and  professional.  In 
many  cases  it  is  only  when  both  father  and  mother  con- 
tribute to  the  family  income  that  professional  people  are 
able  to  maintain  a  household  and  to  rear  children  with 
proper  provision  for  health,  recreation,  and  education.  But 
the  practice  has  sound  psychological  and  social  justification. 
There  is  a  deepening  conviction  that  in  order  to  bring  up 
children  to  be  intelligent  citizens  and  workers,  both  parents 
alike  must  be  intelligent  citizens  and  workers  themselves. 
A  woman  must  continue  to  use  her  professional  equipment 
actively  and  socially.  She  cannot  adequately  meet  her  obli- 
gations to  her  own  children  without  at  the  same  time 
meeting  her  obligations  to  other  children  and  young  people 
of  the  community,  in  the  school,  on  the  playground,  in  the 
home,  the  store,  the  office,  and  the  factory.  The  working 
out  of  simpler  standards  of  living  and  household  routine,  the 

'  This  is  strongly  urged  in  a  recent  bulletin  of  the  Carnegie  Foun- 
dation for  the  Advancement  of  Teaching:  The  Professional  Prepa- 
ration of  Teachers  for  American  Public  Schools.  Number  Four- 
teen (1920),  pp.  139-144,  391. 


WOMEN  AS  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS      33 

better  understanding  of  the  principles  and  practices  gov- 
erning physical  and  mental  health  in  children,  are  making  it 
practicable  as  well  as  desirable  to  meet  both  sets  of  obliga- 
tions and  to  have  one  reinforce  instead  of  hindering  the 
other.  It  is  being  discovered  that  intelligent  direction  of  a 
child's  care  and  companionship  with  it  during  certain  hours 
are  more  fruitful  of  results  and  less  wasteful  than  unre- 
mitting attention  to  its  routine  needs.  The  people  to  whom 
professional  women  depute  some  of  this  routine  care  are 
likely  to  be  more  intelligently  chosen  than  the  people  to 
whom  many  women  of  the  leisure  type  entrust  their  chil- 
dren for  a  large  part  of  the  time. 

But  even  if  a  professional  woman  finds  it  necessary  or 
advisable  to  give  up  active  professional  work  while  her  chil- 
dren are  young,  or  for  other  reasons,  she  can  bring  profes- 
sional standards  and  methods  to  bear  upon  the  problems  of 
family  and  community  life,  and  has  a  chance  to  become  that 
rare  and  valuable  type  of  citizen,  the  "professional  volun- 
teer," who  can  direct  other  volunteer  workers  and  interpret 
to  the  supporting  and  participating  public  the  programs  of 
professional  experts.  She  may  be  an  illustration  of  the 
paradox  that  to  be  a  good  volunteer  a  person  must  have 
been  a  good  paid  worker,  and  may  become  in  a  valid  sense 
a  sort  of  publicity  agent  for  the  professional  point  of  view. 
Through  such  services  she  will  be  enabled  to  keep  in  touch 
with  the  progress  of  her  profession  against  the  day  of  her 
"second  leisure,"  when  she  is  again  ready  to  enter  the  pro- 
fessional ranks. 

The  increasing  professional  stability  of  married  women 
will  do  much  to  strengthen  the  position  and  improve  the 
status  of  professional  women  in  general,  whose  advance- 
ment has  been  retarded  on  the  ground  that  women  are  a 
temporary  and  undependable  labor  supply  because  of  mar- 
riage and  the  prospect  of  marriage.  Employers  have  been 
fond  of  making  rash  generalizations  about  professional 
women  based  largely  on  their  experience  with  clerical  and 
other  routine  women.  Careful  comparative  studies  are 
needed  of  the  "labor  turnover"  ^  among  men  and  women 

*  See  A.  J.  Todd,  The  Scientific  Spirit  and  Social  Work  (1919). 
Chapter  VII. 


34         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

in  responsible  and  expert  positions  as  well  as  among  men 
arid  women  routine  workers.  Some  of  the  following  chap- 
ters present  evidence  from  employers  who  are  making  such 
studies  that  in  the  higher  groups  the  "duration  of  employ- 
ment" is  practically  the  same  for  men  and  women.  An- 
other movement  which  is  improving  the  status  of  men  and 
women  alike  is  described  in  the  next  chapter :  the  drawing 
up  of  definite  specifications  for  professional  workers  and 
the  devising  of  objective  methods  of  testing  and  rating 
upon  which  to  base  promotion. 

On  all  sides  to-day  there  is  a  new  awareness  of  the 
value  of  the  professional  worker  and  a  demand  which 
cannot  be  met  for  people  with  a  substantial  general  educa- 
tion, an  understanding  of  the  principles  which  govern  human 
conduct,  and  a  professional  training  which  includes  actual 
practice  in  all  phases  of  the  work  to  be  done  and  an 
ability  to  reflect  upon  and  improve  that  practice.  The  pro- 
gressively successful  conduct  of  any  important  hurnan  en- 
terprise is  seen  to  involve:  (i)  Professional  administra- 
tors, superintendents,  and  managers — the  executive  group; 
(2)  Professional  research  and  technical  experts — the  re- 
search group;  (3)  Professional  supervisors  and  instruc- 
tors of  beginners  and  routine  workers — the  instructional 
group;  (4)  Professional  service  workers  under  supervision 
— the  journeyman  group;  (5)  Professional  learners  in  serv- 
ice— the  apprentice  group.  There  appears  to  be  a  general 
readiness  to  admit  women  to  the  research  and  instructional 
groups,  and  at  least  a  disposition  toward  giving  them  a 
fair  trial  in  the  executive  group.  This  new  professional 
challenge  to  women  is  even  more  searching  than  the  politi- 
'  cal  challenge;  and  they  can  meet  it  only  by  accepting 
fully  their  obligation  to  prepare  for  positions  of  responsi- 
bility through  serving  as  professional  apprentices  and  jour- 
neymen. With  a  chance  to  come  out  at  the  top,  they  can 
afford  to  begin  at  the  bottom,  as  they  could  not  afford  to 
do  in  the  old  days  when  they  were  consigned  to  a  sort 
of  professional  limbo.  In  meriting  and  winning  a  generous 
recognition  as  professional  workers,  they  will  not  only 
win  it  for  other  women,  but  will  be  adding  to  the  all  too 
scanty   stock   of   intelligent   and   expert   and   disinterested 


WOMEN  AS  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS      35 

effort  in  a  sorely  confused  and  harassed  world.  Graham 
Wallas  says  of  women :  "If  they  do  more  work,  think  more 
thoughts,  and  offer  a  larger  contribution  of  skilled  or- 
ganizers than  they  do  at  present  to  the  grievously  insuf- 
ficient personnel  by  which  the  Great  Society  is  held  to- 
gether, we  shall  be  drawing  a  larger  dividend  from  the 
same  body  of  human  capital."  ^ 
'  The  Great  Society,  p.  348- 


CHAPTER  III 

SPECIFICATIONS  FOR  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

Personnel  specifications,  or  brief  descriptions  of  the 
particular  work  to  be  done  and  the  particular  worker  re- 
quired to  do  it,  together  with  statements  regarding  rates  of 
pay  and  lines  and  methods  of  promotion,  are  a  new  thing 
in  the  professions.  In  the  industries,  where  they  are  be- 
coming well  established,  they  are  known  as  "job  specifica- 
tions," and  represent  a  combination  of  the  "job  analysis" 
of  the  planning  or  "scientific  management"  department  and 
the  requisition  for  workers  made  upon  the  employment  or 
personnel  department.^  They  are  an  indication  of  the 
growing  attention  to  the  psychological  side  of  occupations 
and  the  growing  realization  of  the  human  and  material 
wastes  of  occupational  vagueness,  uncertainties  of  tenure 
and  promotion,  lack  of  objective  ratings  and  incentives,  and 
maladjustments  of  various  sorts.  The  professions  have 
been  not  the  least  of  sinners  in  these  respects ;  and  there  is 
no  doubt  that  clear  statements  of  duties,  qualifications,  re- 
wards and  prospects  in  professional  positions  will  do  much 
to  improve  the  morale  and  efficiency  of  professional  workers 
and  to  guide  and  check  up  professional  education.  To  se- 
cure their  satisfactory  operation,  professional  specifica- 
tions should  involve  a  recognition  of  definite  grades  of 
worker  and  a  fair  and  generally  understood  system  of  pro- 
motion from  one  grade  to  another.  While  they  are  more 
difficult  to  draw  than  industrial  specifications,  they  have 
already  demonstrated  their  usefulness,  and  there  is  an  ac- 

^  See  H.  C.  Link,  Employment  Psychology  (1919),  Chapter  20; 
Franklyn  Meine,  Job  Specifications  (1920),  Bull.  Federal  Board  for 
Vocational  Education ;  R.  W.  Kelly,  Hiring  the  Worker  ( 1918)  ; 
Ordway  Tead  and  Henry  C.  Metcalf,  Personnel  Administration 
( 1920) . 

36 


SPECIFICATIONS  FOR   WORKERS  37 

tive  demand  for  their  further  development  and  for  con- 
tinued investigation  of  their  possibilities. 

The  most  striking  examples  of  professional  specifications 
are  those  prepared  during  the  war  by  the  Army  Committee 
on  Classification  of  Personnel,  under  the  direction  of  Dr. 
Walter  Dill  Scott,  the  well-known  psychologist.  The  last 
edition  of  its  "Trade  Specifications  and  Index  of  Pro- 
fessions and  Trades  in  the  Army,"  issued  in  November, 
1918,  describes  some  seven  hundred  types  of  worker,  of 
whom  about  two  hundred  may  be  considered  professional. 
There  are,  for  instance,  fifty-five  specifications  for  chemists. 
The  Committee  was  at  work  at  the  time  of  the  armistice 
upon  fuller  professional  specifications  for  officers.  It  de- 
vised a  remarkable  officers'  rating  scale,  and  graded  all 
workers  as  apprentices,  journeymen,  and  experts  in  their 
several  occupations.  It  has  published  a  detailed  account 
of  its  history  and  methods,  invaluable  for  civilian  work 
along  these  lines. ^ 

The  following  model  officers'  specification  illustrates  the 
methods  of  the  Committee.  Since  army  pay  and  promotion 
are  in  accordance  with  known  regulations,  there  are  no 
statements  on  these  points. 

MODEL  SPECIFICATION 

Name  of  Corps  or  Arm — Coast  Artillery  Corps. 

Name  of  Exact  Subdivision  or  Organization  Covered — 

Battery,  motorized  gun  or  howitzer. 
Official  Designation  and  Rank  of  Officer  Covered  in 

This  Specification — Battery  commander,  captain. 

I.    DESCRIPTION  OF  DUTIES 

It  is  desired  that  the  duties  to  be  performed  shall  be 
stated  with  sufficient  clearness  to  enable  the  selecting  offi- 
cers to  secure  a  comprehensive  view  of  the  duties  that  will 
devolve  upon  this  officer.     Duties  may  fall  under  the  head- 

^ Personnel  System  of  the  United  States  Army  (1919),  two  vol- 
umes.   See  especially  Vol.  I,  Chapters  13-17,  42,  43. 


38         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

ings  listed  below,  or  under  headings  you  may  need  to  add. 
Be  specific,  comprehensive,  and  complete. 


Administration 

Technical  Duties 

Construction 

Property  accountability 

Supply 

Maintenance  and  repair 

Property  responsibility 

Transportation 

Personnel 

Care  of  equipment 

Engineering 

Procurement 

Instruction  and  drill 

Finance 

Production 

Tactical  and  combat  duty 

Inspection 

Science  and  research 

Under  these  or  other  heads  state  just  what  the  officer 
does. 

If  the  duties  in  America  and  abroad  are  different,  state 
the  difference. 

Commands  four  lieutenants  and  219-278  men.  Respon- 
sible for  preparation  of  company  reports  and  records,  for 
the  proper  equipment  of  his  command  and  the  messing 
of  the  personnel.  Responsible  for  property  of  the  battery: 
guns  or  howitzers,  motor  trucks  and  tractors ;  infantry  equip- 
ment of  each  soldier ;  and  other  company  supplies.  Respon- 
sible for  the  training  and  discipline  of  officers  and  men 
as  soldiers,  and  their  instruction  in  loading,  firing  of  guns 
or  howitzers,  machine  guns  and  small  arms,  and  the  proper 
care  of  them ;  in  motor  transportation ;  in  observation,  sig- 
naling, and  telegraphic  communication ;  in  earthwork  con- 
struction; in  gas  defense;  and  in  camouflage.  Responsible 
for  the  tactical  movement  of  his  battery  (men,  guns,  and 
equipment);  tactical  preparation  of  positions  for  guns; 
orientation  (by  means  of  surveying)  ;  calculation  of  firing 
data  (involving  use  of  trigonometry  and  logarithms)  ;  and 
correction  of  data  when  firing  and  under  fire. 

When  battery  operates  independently  will  assume  duties 
of  Major — requiring  tactical  judgment  in  reconnoissance, 
and  initiative  in  direction  and  supervision  of  fire. 

II.     FIRST  CHOICE  OF  CIVILIAN  OCCUPATION 

That  is,  the  civilian  occupation  which  you  consider  the 
nearest  equivalent  to  the  army  position  being  described,  or 
which  best  fits  a  person  to  perform  the  duties  of  this  officer. 
To  the  right  of  this  occupation  write  the  number  of  years 
of  experience  you  think  a  man  should  have  had  in  this 


SPECIFICATIONS  FOR  WORKERS  39 

occupation  properly  to  fit  him  for  the  duties  which  this 
officer  performs. 

Occupation  Years  engaged  at  it 

Civil  engineer  3-5 

III.  OTHER  CHOICES  OF  CIVILIAN  OCCUPATION 

Supposing  a  person  of  the  occupation  you  mentioned 
above  as  first  choice  were  not  available,  what  other  occupa- 
tions would  you  choose.  Give  at  least  three,  and  the  num- 
ber of  years  engaged. 

Occupation  Years  Engaged  at  It 

Electrical  or  Mechanical  Engineer 3-5 

Graduate  of  recognized  technical  school 
with  business  or  professional  experi- 
ence      3-5 

College  graduate  with  business  or  profes- 
sional experience 3-5 

IV.     SPECIAL   TECHNICAL   QUALIFICATIONS 

Enter  below  technical  abilities  not  elsewhere  specified. 
Required — Working    knowledge    of    mathematics    through 

trigonometry  and  logarithms. 
Desired — Knowledge  of  mechanics,  electricity,  and  motor 

transportation. 

V.     STAFF  CORPS  SCHOOL 

Can  this  officer  function  immediately  upon  being  com- 
missioned from  civil  life,  or  from  another  branch  of  the 
service,  or  will  he  be  required  to  train  at  a  staff  corps  school, 
and  if  so,  for  how  long? 

\VZTetuired\^''  ^"^"^  ^^^°°^  ^°^  ^^^'^^  "'°"^^''- 

VI.    AGE  LIMITS 

Some  positions  in  the  army,  but  not  all,  have  age  limits; 
that  is,  the  officer  should  not  be  older  than  a  certain  age, 
nor  younger  than  a  certain  age,  properly  to  perform  the 


40 


WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 


duties  required.    If  you  consider  that  age  has  any  bearing 
on  the  duties,  indicate  below  : 

Possible  age  limit i 25-45  years 

Best  age  limit 30-40  years 

VII.     PHYSICAL  REQUIREMENTS 


This  officer  must  be  qualified  for  full  military 
service 

This  officer  may  be  qualified  for  limited  service 
only,  but  must  be  free  from  the  following  dis- 
abilities    


Yes 

No 

v/ 

VIII.     SCHOOLING 


In  the  space  belov^r,  indicate  the 
minimum  schooling  required  in  this 
officer. 


Elementary  school 

High  or  secondary  school 

College   

Professional  or  technical  school. 
Business  school  or  college  


Graduated 

Year  com- 
pleted 

Yes 

No 

\/ 

2 



IX.  DEGREE  OF  LEADERSHIP  REQUIRED 


Maximum — Officer  actually  in  charge 
of  combatant  troops. 

Average  maximum — Duties  executive. 
Require  initiative  and 
control  of   large   force. 

Average — Duties  largely  administra- 
tive routine. 

Nominal — Officer  engaged  principally 
in  research. 


Essential 

Desired 

v/ 

SPECIFICATIONS  FOR  WORKERS  41 

The  Committee  on  Classification  of  Personnel  thus  de- 
fined its  use  of  terms  applied  to  workers  of  different  grades 
of  competence  and  experience : 

"As  employed  in  this  classification  the  word  Apprentice 
must  be  understood  to  mean  apprentice,  a  partially  skilled 
man,  a  learner  or  beginner,  not  apprentice  in  the  narrow 
technical  sense. 

"The  word  Journeyman  must  be  understood  to  mean 
the  man  who  has  graduated  from  the  preceding  class  to 
the  general  practice  of  his  profession  or  use  of  the  tools 
of  the  craft,  a  man  of  average  skill  and  one  capable  of 
operating  independently — i.e.,  a  journeyman  in  the  usual 
sense. 

"The  word  Expert  must  be  understood  to  mean  a  spe- 
cially skilled  professional  man  or  journeyman — that  is,  a 
workman  or  specialist  who  by  reason  of  extensive  practice 
or  experience  as  a  journeyman  or  special  or  unusual  expe- 
rience is  thoroughly  familiar  with  all  the  phases  of  his 
profession  or  trade."  ^ 

The  Scott  Rating  Scale  for  Officers  ^  is  based  on  the  idea 
of  estimating  a  man  with  respect  to  a  given  quality  or  group 
of  qualities  through  comparing  him  directly  with  other  men 
possessing  these  qualities  in  varying  degrees.  It  is  a  living 
scale,  and  was  the  outgrowth  of  a  method  of  rating  sales- 
men which  formed  part  of  a  five-year  study  of  salesman- 
ship which  Dr.  Scott  was  conducting  when  the  United 
States  entered  the  war.  In  its  military  application,  each 
officer  was  rated  by  his  immediate  superior  for  five  separate 
groups  of  qualities :  physical  qualities,  intelligence,  leader- 
ship, personal  qualities,  general  value  to  service,  each  of 
these  being  subdivided  and  defined.  A  separate  scale  for 
each  group  was  constructed  in  terms  of  individual  officers 
of  the  rank  for  which  the  officer  was  being  considered  ; 
i.e.,  scales  for  rating  lieutenants  were  made  up  of  captains  ; 
for  rating  captains,  of  majors.  Thus,  for  the  group  of  phys- 
ical qualities  impressing  men,  each  rating  officer  made  a 

^  Trade  Specifications  and  Index,  U.  S.  Army  (1918),  War  De- 
partment Document  774. 

^Personnel  System  U.  S.  Army,  Vol.  I,  Chapter  43;  Vol.  II,  Chap- 
ter 12. 


42         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

preliminai"y  list  of  from  twelve  to  twenty-five  officers  of  his 
own  rank  known  to  him,  and  from  this  list  selected  officers 
of  the  best  and  worst  physical  presence  to  represent  the 
two  ends  of  the  scale.  He  then  selected  an  officer  midway 
between  the  two  in  physical  impressiveness,  and  two  others, 
one  between  the  middle  and  the  highest  and  one  between 
the  middle  and  the  lowest,  so  that  the  scale  read :  Brown, 
highest;  Green,  high;  Black,  middle;  White,  low;  Gray, 
lowest.  A  similar  living  scale  was  made  for  each  of  the 
four  other  groups  of  qualities,  taking  care  not  always  to 
use  the  same  men  as  standards.  Each  officer  to  be  rated 
was  then  estimated  by  a  direct  man-to-man  comparison  with 
the  officers  making  up  the  scales,  rating  all  those  to  be 
considered  by  one  scale  before  going  on  to  the  next.  Each 
place  on  a  scale  had  a  numerical  value,  the  highest  15,  the 
lowest  3 ;  but  no  numerical  estimate  was  made  until  after 
a  man  had  been  directly  rated  for  all  five  groups  of  quali- 
ties. Then  the  sum  of  the  points  gave  his  total  rating. 
The  actual  measurements  were  always  in  terms  of  human 
beings,  never  in  terms  of  points.  It  was  estimated  that 
after  a  little  practice,  the  making  of  a  scale  took  about 
twenty  minutes,  the  rating  of  an  officer  about  sixty  seconds. 
Every  officer  was  rerated  at  the  end  of  three  months ;  and 
all  ratings  were  reviewed  by  the  immediate  superior  of 
the  rating  officer.  After  the  armistice  a  careful  study  was 
made  by  the  Committee  of  the  operation  of  the  scale,  and  it 
was  recommended  that  three  independent  ratings  for  each 
group  of  qualities  be  made  for  each  officer,  his  final  rating 
to  be  the  average  of  the  three.  During  the  war  the  rating 
scale  was  accepted  by  army  officers  with  a  surprising  de- 
gree of  approval,  and  was  surprisingly  accurate  in  its  re- 
sults, keeping  the  advantages  of  judgments  in  personal 
terms  and  at  the  same  time  doing  away  with  individual  bias 
and  favoritism. 

This  rating  scale  was  later  adapted  by  the  firm  of  per- 
sonnel consultants,  of  which  Dr.  Scott  was  the  head,  to  the 
rating  of  industrial  and  commercial  executives.  With  a 
proper  selection  of  quality-groups  to  be  rated,  it  might  be 
advantageously  applied  to  the  promotion  of  many  kinds  of 
professional  workers;  and  its  early  trial  may  be  hoped  for 


SPECIFICATIONS  FOR   WORKERS  43 

in  the  fields  of  teaching,  the  social  services,  government 
service,  and,  in  fact,  w^herever  there  are  recognized  grades 
of  service.  It  has  possibiHties  for  the  grading  of  students 
as  well  as  of  teachers.  The  great  merits  of  the  scale  are 
that  it  recognizes  the  psychological  truth  that  we  judge 
people  in  terms  of  people  and  not  in  terms  of  abstract  quali- 
ties; that  it  is  simple  and  takes  little  time;  that  it  is  con- 
sidered fair  by  both  raters  and  rated.  In  its  non-military 
applications  it  may  be  questioned  whether  there  might  not 
be  ratings  by  co-workers  as  well  as  superiors,  and  perhaps 
even  by  subordinates.  There  might  at  least  be  some  sys- 
tem of  review  by  the  last  two  groups. 

Another  war-time  contribution  to  the  problem  of  select- 
ing and  promoting  professional  workers  is  to  be  found 
in  the  general  intelligence  tests  prepared  by  the  psychologists 
making  up  the  Psychological  Division  of  the  Surgeon  Gen- 
eral's Office  under  the  direction  of  Dr.  Robert  M.  Yerkes 
and  given  to  about  a  million  and  a  half  soldiers  in  the 
camps.^  While  their  greatest  military  value  lay  in  the 
detection  and  weeding  out  of  men  of  subnormal  intelligence, 
they  also  revealed  substantial  correlations  between  superior 
general  intelligence  and  military  efficiency.  Among  officers 
the  engineers  and  other  technical  services  showed  the  high- 
est averages.  In  some  camps  more  than  20  per  cent  of 
the  enlisted  men  reached  the  A  and  B  ratings  which  toward 
the  end  of  the  war  were  used  in  selecting  men  for  com- 
missions. The  great  value  of  these  general  intelligence 
lies  in  their  indication  of  grades  of  mental  ability  irrespec- 
tive of  education.  They  are  likely  to  come  into  general 
use  as  a  means  of  sifting  out  from  large  groups  those  with 
capacity  for  further  education,  special  training,  or  special 
employment.  They  can  be  easily  and  quickly  given  to  such 
groups  and  automatically  scored.  The  army  tests  for  liter- 
ates have  been  used  experimentally  since  the  close  of  the 
war  by  a  number  of  higher  institutions,  notably  by  Columbia 
University,  as  checks  upon  entrance  examinations  or  as  sub- 
stitutes for  them;  and  may  assist  in  determining  both  the 
limits  and  the  possibilities  of  education  for  different  levels 

'See  Personnel  System  of  the  U.  S.  Army,  Vol.  II,  Chapter  10; 
C.  E.  Yoakum  and  R.  M.  Yerkco,  .Irmy  Mental  Tests  (1920). 


44         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

of  intelligence.  They  apparently  always  detect  the  unfit. 
But  they  do  not  reveal  special  aptitudes  nor  familiarity 
with  special  subject-matters  and  techniques. 

For  this,  special  intelligence  tests  must  be  provided,  which 
are  far  less  fully  developed  and  far  more  difficult  to  de- 
vise, although  the  educational,  vocational,  and  employment 
psychologists  are  actively  at  work  upon  them.  Tests  of 
vocational  aptitude  as  a  basis  for  vocational  guidance  and 
tests  of  vocational  competence  on  the  basis  of  professed 
training  or  experience,  need  to  be  carefully  distinguished. 
The  Committee  on  Classification  of  Personnel  made  use  of 
a  remarkable  series  of  performance  tests  for  a  number  of 
the  skilled  trades,^  which  revealed  that  of  soldiers  professing 
trade  competence,  30  per  cent  were  novices  or  wholly  inex- 
perienced in  the  trade ;  40  per  cent  were  apprentices  or  be- 
ginners; 24  per  cent  were  journeymen,  and  only  6  per  cent 
were  experts.  Adequate  tests  for  professional  workers  are 
naturally  more  difficult  to  work  out  and  have  not  been 
seriously  attempted  except  in  the  traditional  forms  of  exam- 
inations and  satisfactory  working  experience.  Dr.  Link 
describes  tests  successfully  applied  to  industrial  and  clerical 
workers  of  various  kinds,  and  says :  "Other  types  of 
work  have  already  been  dealt  with  by  other  psychologists, 
and  as  time  goes  on,  this  range  will  undoubtedly  increase 
very  greatly."  But  he  is  doubtful  of  their  applicability  at 
present  to  the  choice  of  "men  for  higher  positions,  execu- 
tives, planners,  organizers — the  so-called  big  men.  Can 
tests  be  applied  which  will  make  it  possible  to  discover  men 
of  large  caliber  and  large  capabilities?  .  .  .  This  question 
must  frankly  be  answered  in  the  negative.  The  psycholog- 
ical method  is  at  the  present  stage  of  its  development  unable 
to  select  men  who  possess  the  exceptional  qualities  required 
by  the  exceptional  position."  -  Nevertheless,  the  whole 
matter  of  selecting,  training,  and  promoting  professional 
workers  is  still  so  largely  haphazard  or  conventional  that 
this  line  of  investigation  needs  to  be  carefully  and  patiently 
followed.    The  new  Inter-Professional  Conference  or  some 

^Personnel  System  of  the  U.  S.  Army,  Vol.  I,  Chapters  28-30; 
Vol.  II.  Chapter  6. 
''Employment  Psychology,  pp.  t88,  189. 


SPECIFICATIONS  FOR   WORKERS  45 

other  body  representing  the  professions  could  do  nothing 
more  useful  than  to  establish  a  bureau  under  expert  direc- 
tion for  the  study  of  tests  for  the  several  professions  and 
the  preparation  of  adequate  specifications,  somewhat  along 
the  lines  of  the  research  bureaus  for  the  study  of  salesman- 
ship maintained  under  the  auspices  of  the  Carnegie  Institute 
of  Technology. 

Meanwhile,  immediate  and  practical  improvement  in  the 
professions  and  in  professional  education  appears  to  be 
coming  through  the  provision  of  specifications  rather  than 
through  the  provision  of  psychological  tests.  The  indus- 
tries are  cooperating  with  professional  associations  in  draw- 
ing up  specifications  of  the  kinds  of  expert  workers  they 
require,  to  be  submitted  to  the  colleges  and  professional 
schools.  Federal,  state,  and  city  governments  are  reclas- 
sifying their  civil  services  and  furnishing  specifications  for 
each  position  and  grade.  The  general  readjustment  of  sal- 
aries to  meet  the  shrinkage  of  the  dollar  is  furthering  the 
process,  since  the  establishment  of  higher  salary  schedules 
leads  to  a  reformulation  of  the  duties  to  be  performed  at 
each  salary  level.  Organized  employment  or  personnel  de- 
partments are  likewise  assisting. 

At  the  annual  meeting  of  the  Technology  Clubs  Asso- 
ciated in  March,  1920,  a  conference  was  held  between 
representatives  of  the  industries  and  representatives  of  the 
colleges  and  professional  schools,  at  which  the  present  short- 
age of  trained  executive  and  technical  experts  was  dis- 
cussed ;  and  it  was  agreed  that  the  industries  should  submit 
specifications  of  the  duties  and  qualifications  of  profes- 
sional workers  needed  in  their  several  fields,  and  the  Amer- 
ican Council  on  Education  should  circulate  these  specifica- 
tions among  the  colleges  to  assist  in  bridging  the  gap  be- 
tween preparation  and  practice.  Many  of  the  major  indus- 
trial groups  were  represented,  and  a  plan  was  worked 
out  by  means  of  which  a  central  industrial  council  is  to  be 
established,  made  up  of  delegates  from  committees  on  edu- 
cational problems  in  each  industry.  This  industrial  council 
is  to  name  half  the  members  of  a  small  joint  council,  the 
other  members  representing  the  American  Council  on  Edu- 
cation, which  is  to  review  the  specifications  prepared  by  the 


46         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL,  WORKERS 

various  industries  and  submit  them  to  the  colleges  for 
consideration  in  educational  terms.  It  was  held  that  this 
plan  uses  the  industrial  and  educational  groups  in  ways  in 
which  they  are  respectively  expert,  and  leaves  educational 
institutions  free  to  meet  the  requirements  of  industry  by 
any  methods  which  they  consider  educationally  sound.  It 
suggests  a  way  out  of  the  long-standing  conflict  between 
hberal  and  vocational  education. 

At  the  conference,  specifications  were  presented  by  the 
paper,  rubber,  and  shoe  industries,  including  suggestions  for 
the  use  of  the  student's  three  undergraduate  summer  vaca- 
tions in  acquiring  a  general  familiarity  with  "plant"  or 
"shop"  conditions  and  practices.  Other  industries  under- 
took to  prepare  specifications.  Some  three  hundred  firms 
are  already  cooperating,  and  have  pledged  specified  sums  for 
three  years  to  carry  out  a  continuous  survey  of  industrial 
needs  and  educational  facilities.  While  the  chief  aim  of 
the  project  is  the  procurement  of  technically  trained  men, 
the  growing  importance  of  women  in  industrial  manage- 
ment has  not  been  wholly  forgotten ;  and  their  interests 
will  be  represented  on  the  joint  industrial  and  educational 
committee  through  the  director  of  the  American  Council 
on  Education  who  is  also  a  member  of  the  Council's  com- 
mittee on  the  training  of  women  for  professional  service. 
The  wide  educational  distribution  of  these  industrial  speci- 
fications is  bound  to  have  far-reaching  consequences  for 
both  men  and  women  professional  workers  as  well  as  for 
educational  institutions  and  the  industries.  It  may  even 
lead  to  the  drafting  of  specifications  for  members  of  college 
faculties.^ 

The  increasing  number  and  variety  of  professional  work- 
ers in  government  services  renders  highly  significant  the 
general  movement  toward  a  reorganization  and  reclassifica- 
tion of  these  services  and  the  preparation  of  adequate 
specifications  for  the  positions  falling  under  them.  Since 
the  war.  Great  Britain  and  Canada  have  reclassified  their 
civil  services ;  and  an  expert  commission  has  recently  sub- 
mitted to  the  Congress  of  the  United  States  a  proposed  re- 

*  See  Hollis  Godfrey.  Cooperation  between  Industry  and  the 
Colleges,  Educational  Review,  June,   1920. 


SPECIFICATIONS  FOR  WORKERS  47 

classification  of  the  federal  civil  service  in  Washington,  now 
more  or  less  obsolete  and  chaotic.^  In  1917  standard  speci- 
fications were  issued  covering  the  civil  service  of  the  City 
of  New  York.  In  1918  similar  specifications  were  prepared 
for  the  civil  service  of  the  State  of  Massachusetts.  In 
1919,  the  Reconstruction  Commission  appointed  by  the 
Governor  of  the  State  of  New  York  presented  a  report 
on  retrenchment  and  reorganization  in  the  state  govern- 
ment. Unfortunately,  these  various  proposals  have  not  yet 
become  law.  But  Ohio,  Illinois,  Nebraska,  and  Idaho  have 
put  into  effect  drastic  reorganizations  of  their  stat§  services ; 
and  other  states  are  considering  similar  action.  Many  of 
the  examination  announcements  of  the  United  States  Civil 
Service  Commission  are  in  effect  professional  specifications ; 
and  the  same  thing  is  true  to  some  degree  of  state  and 
municipal  announcements.  There  is  a  large  opportunity  to 
make  these  examinations  genuine  instead  of  formal  tests 
for  both  appointment  and  promotion,  utilizing  the  best 
modern  employing  methods.  The  federal  Report  on  Reclas- 
sification, just  referred  to,  recommends  that  the  United 
States  Civil  Service  Commission  be  made  in  the  full  sense 
a  centralized  personnel  agency  for  the  government,  work- 
ing through  personnel  committees  in  the  several  depart- 
ments and  services  and  charged  with  continuous  study  of 
personnel  needs,  with  the  devising  of  efficiency  measure- 
ments for  promotions,  and  with  the  establishment  of  systems 
of  training  workers  in  government  service  and  representa- 
tive advisory  councils  of  civil  service  employees. 

The  New  York  City  "Standard  Specifications  for  Per- 
sonal Service"  are  classified  under  sixteen  "services."  Each 
service  is  divided  into  "groups"  and  each  group  into 
"grades"  with  specified  advancements  in  salary  within  each 
grade  and  promotion  from  one  grade  to  the  next  higher. 
The  Massachusetts  state  specifications,  which  are  unpub- 
lished, are  similarly  classified  under  nine  "services"  with 
subordinate  groups  and  grades.     Institutional  positions  in 

^Report  of  the  Joint  Commission  on  Reclassification  of  Salaries 
in  the  Washington  Federal  Service.  Submitting  a  Classification  of 
Positions  on  the  Basis  of  Duties  and  Qualifications,  and  Schedules 
of  Compensation  for  the  Respective  Classes,  March,  1920. 


48         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

both  are  arranged  separately.  The  1,762  specifications  of 
the  federal  Reclassification  Report  are  arranged  under  44 
services  and  376  series.  Each  specification  describes  a 
"class"  of  workers  performing  closely  similar  duties.  As- 
cending classes  form  a  series.  They  are  not  numbered  but 
are  given  distinguishing  titles.  In  the  "services  involving 
clerical,  office,  or  commercial  work,"  titles  may  be  illus- 
trated as  follows :  under  clerk,  junior  clerk,  senior  clerk, 
principal  clerk,  head  clerk,  and  chief  clerk.  In  the  "services 
involving  scientific,  technical,  professional,  or  subsidiary 
work,"  the  titles  are  taken  from  the  field  of  higher  educa- 
tion, as  junior  economist,  assistant  economist,  associate 
economist,  economist,  senior  economist.  Every  specification 
includes  a  statement  of  the  range  of  compensation  and  of 
the  principal  lines  of  promotion. 

All  three  classifications  use  the  term  "professional"  in  a 
narrower  sense  than  that  employed  in  this  book,  although 
they  vary  in  the  occupations  included  under  it.  The  New 
York  City  "Professional  Service"  includes  the  accountant 
group  with  four  grades ;  the  architect  group  with  six  grades  ; 
the  bacteriologist  group  with  four  grades ;  the  chaplain  group 
with  one  grade ;  the  chemist  and  physicist  group  with  five 
grades ;  the  dentist  group  with  three  grades ;  the  engineer 
group  with  six  grades ;  the  forester  group  with  one  grade ; 
the  lawyer  group  with  four  grades;  the  nurse  group  with 
five  grades;  the  pathologist  group  with  four  grades;  the 
pharmacist  group  with  three  grades;  the  physician  group 
with  six  grades;  the  veterinarian  group  with  two  grades. 
The  Massachusetts  "Professional  Service"  includes  the 
biologist  group  with  one  grade ;  the  engineering  group  with 
six  grades ;  the  fish  and  bird  culturist  group  with  one 
grade ;  the  forester  group  with  two  grades ;  the  lawyer  group 
with  one  grade ;  the  nurse  group  with  two  grades ;  the 
ornithologist  group  with  one  grade;  the  physician  group 
with  three  grades ;  the  psychologist  group  with  two  grades ; 
the  research  laboratory  group  with  four  grades;  the  statis- 
tician group  with  one  grade ;  the  instructor  of  the  blind 
group  with  one  grade;  the  librarian  group  with  three 
grades ;  the  associate  in  education  group  with  three  grades ; 
the  normal  school  instructor  group  with  five  grades.    The 


SPECIFICATIONS  FOR  WORKERS  49 

proposed  Federal  Classification  includes  actuarial  service, 
agricultural  promotion  and  extension  service,  architectural 
service,  arts  sei-vice,  biological  science  service,  chaplain  serv- 
;  ice,  community  and  recreation  service,  economic  and  politi- 
'  cal  science  service,  educational  service,  engineering  service, 
law  and  examiner  service,  library  service,  medical  science 
service,  nursing  service,  patent  service,  physical  science  serv- 
ice, social  science  servace,  statistical  service^  and  translat- 
ing service. 

Other  M'orkers  of  professional  character,  in  our  use  of 
the  term,  such  as  administrators  and  supervisors,  financial 
and  commercial  experts,  social  workers,  probation  officers, 
civil  service  examiners,  personnel  officers,  editors  and  in- 
formation workers,  are  grouped  under  such  headings  as 
"administrative  and  supervisory  service,"  "investigational 
and  inspectional  service,"  "fiscal  and  accounting  service," 
"specialized  business  service,"  "department  publications  and 
information  service,"  "personnel  service." 

The  following  specifications  illustrate  those  proposed  in 
1918  for  the  Massachusetts  service  and  in  1920  for  the 
Washington  federal  service. 

COMMONWEALTH  OF  MASSACHUSETTS 
Professional  and  Scientific  Service 

LIBRARIAN  GROUP 

Grade  1 
Title  of  Position  : 
JUNIOR  ASSISTANT  LIBRARIAN 

Duties : 

To  perform  general  reference  and  research  work  under 
assignment. 

To  classify  library  material,  and  index  and  catalogue 
books  and  publications. 

To  perform  routine  library  duties  as  assigned. 

To  be  responsible  for  a  department  library,  including 


50         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

the  organization  of  the  Hbrary,  classification  of  material, 
and  general  reference  work  for  the  department. 

To  perform  such  other  related,  incidental,  or  emer- 
gency duty  as  may  be  assigned. 

Qualifications : 

A  certificate  of  graduation  from  a  library  school,  or  an 
equivalent  educational  training,  and,  in  addition,  not  less 
than  one  year  of  experience  in  library  work  affording 
appropriate  training  and  experience  in  the  duties  to  be 
performed. 

Compensation : 

Range  of  annual  salary:  $840-$i,2(X). 
Standard    salary    rates:    $900,    $960,    $1,020,    $1,080, 
$1,140,  $1,200. 

Grade  II 
Title  of  Position  : 
ASSISTANT  LIBRARIAN 

Duties : 

To  be  responsible  for  a  special  field  of  library  work 
requiring  a  thorough  technical  knowledge  of  the  sub- 
ject. 

To  perform  independently  general  library  duties  re- 
quiring a  high  degree  of  skill  and  training. 

To  supervise  routine  work  performed  by  junior  assist- 
ant librarians. 

Qualifications : 

Not  less  than  three  years'  experience  in  Grade  I,  or  if 
appointed  otherwise  than  by  promotion,  practical  experi- 
ence in  a  definite  field  of  library  work  that  would  afford 
appropriate  training  and  experience  for  the  particular 
duties  of  the  position  to  be  filled. 

Compensation : 

Range  of  annual  salary:  $1,200-$  1,980. 
Standard  salary  rates:  $1,200,  $1,320,  $1,440,  $1,560, 
$1,680,  $1,800,  $1,980. 


SPECIFICATIONS  FOR  WORKERS  51 

Grade  III 
Titles  of  Positions  : 
LIBRARIAN  (Director  of  Field  Work). 
LIBRARIAN  (Director  of  Work  with  Aliens). 

Duties : 

Librarian  (Director  of  Field  Work)  : 

To  supervise  library  organizers  and  cataloguers  in 
the  free  public  libraries  of  the  Commonwealth. 

To  plan  and  direct  educational  and  publicity  work 
for  new  libraries  and  to  confer  with  library  trustees 
on  matters  of  library  policy. 

To  make  surveys  of  library  conditions,  and  suggest 
programs  to  trustees  for  efficient  procedure. 

To  advise  in  regard  to  the  organization  of  new  and 
the  reorganization  of  old  libraries. 

To  advise  with  trustees  and  building  committees  con- 
cerning library  buildings  and  plans. 

To  address  library  clubs  and  civic  and  educational 
bodies  and  to  lecture  at  library  schools. 
Librarian  (Director  of  Work  with  Aliens)  : 

To  investigate  facilities  for  educational  work  with 
foreigners  in  the  libraries  of  the  Commonwealth. 

To  confer  and  advise  with  librarians  and  trustees 
of  libraries  in  regard  to  library  facilities  for  aliens. 

To  stimulate  interest  in  libraries  among  foreign 
societies  and  individuals,  and  to  select,  purchase,  and 
supervise  the  distribution  of  all  books  in  foreign  lan- 
guages for  the  traveling  libraries  of  the  Free  Public 
Library  Commission. 

To  address  clubs  and  meetings  for  the  purpose  of 
creating  interest  in  the  library  work  with  aliens. 

Qualifications : 

Librarian  (Director  of  Field  Work)  : 

Not  less  than  three  years  of  experience  as  secre- 
tary, Free  Public  Library  Commission,  or  at  least  six 
years  of  experience  in   library   organization   and   ad- 
ministration. 
Librarian  (Director  of  Work  with  Aliens)  : 


52         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

Not  less  than  six  years  of  experience  in  library 
work,  or  educational  work  involving  some  library  ex- 
perience, at  least  four  years  of  which  shall  have  been 
in  work  with  the  foreign-speaking  alien  population. 

Compensation : 

Range  of  annual  salary:  $2,5(X)-$3,6oo. 
Standard  salary  rates:  $2,580,  $2,820,  $3,060,  $3,300, 
$3,600. 

UNITED  STATES:  WASHINGTON  CIVIL  SERVICE 

Services  Involving  Scientific,  Technical,  Professional  or 
Subsidiary  Work 

41.    Physical  Science  Service 

GEOLOGY 

Title  of  Class: 

AID  IN  GEOLOGY 

Specifications  of  Class 
Duties : 

To  perform  under  immediate  supervision,  minor 
routine  work  in  geology ;  and  to  perform  related  work  as 
required. 

Examples :  Preparing  fossils  and  other  specimens  for 
study ;  recording  and  arranging  geologic  notes ;  acting  as 
rodman  in  a  geologic  field  party. 

Qualifications : 

Training  equivalent  to  that  represented  by  graduation 
from  high  school. 

Principal  Lines  of  Promotion 

To :  Junior  Geologist. 

Compensation  for  Class 
Annual:  $1,200,  $1,320,  $1,440,  $1,560,  $1,680,  $1,800. 


SPECIFICATIONS  FOR  WORKERS  53 

Title  of  Class  : 

JUNIOR  GEOLOGIST 

Specifications  of  Class 
Duties : 

To  perform,  under  immediate  supervision,  subordinate 
work  in  geology;  and  to  perform  related  work  as  re- 
quired. 

Examples :  Carrying  on  or  assisting  in  simple  geologic 
mappings ;  making  and  recording  geologic  observations 
bearing  on  specific  problems ;  making  preliminary  studies 
of  mineral  prospects ;  conducting  plane-table  work ;  ar- 
ranging, labeling,  and  studying  specimens  of  rocks,  fos- 
sils, and  ores ;  and  in  other  ways  aiding  the  chief  in  the 
preparation  of  reports. 

Qualifications : 

Training  equivalent  to  that  represented  by  graduation 
with  a  degree  from  an  institution  of  recognized  standing, 
with  major  work  in  geology;  additional  training  in  one  or 
more  of  the  following  lines :  mineralogy,  petrography,  geo- 
physics, paleontology,  physiography,  mineral  geography, 
glaciology,  stratigraphy,  structural  geology,  economic  ge- 
ology of  the  metalliferous  minerals,  economic  geology  of 
the  fuels — coal,  oil,  or  gas,  or  of  other  nonmetalliferous 
minerals ;  ability  to  read  scientific  French,  or  German,  or 
an  equivalent  modern  language,  and  to  write  clear  and 
concise  English. 

Principal  Lines  of  Promotion 

From:  Aid  in  Geology. 
To :  Assistant  Geologist. 

Compensation  for  Class 
Annual:  $1,800,  $1,920,  $2,040,  $2,160. 
Title  of  Class: 
ASSISTANT  GEOLOGIST 

Specifications  of  Class 
Duties : 

Under  specific  administrative  and  technical  direction,  to 
perform  individually,  or  to  direct  with  assistants,  general 


54         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

geologic  and  related  work  requiring  proven  ability;  or  to 
have  charge  of  minor  subdivisions  of  such  work. 

Examples :  Mapping,  geologically,  definite  portions  of 
an  area;  studying  and  describing  less  important  mineral 
deposits;  tracing  and  mapping  important  geologic  con- 
tacts or  horizons ;  preparing  reports  under  immediate 
supervision,  but  with  some  manifestation  of  scientific 
originality  in  recognizing  problems  and  in  devising  meth- 
ods for  their  solution ;  having  charge  of  a  small  field  party 
or  a  subdivision  thereof. 

Qualifications : 

Training  equivalent  to  that  represented  by  graduation 
with  a  degree  from  an  institution  of  recognized  standing, 
with  major  work  in  geology;  additional  training  equiva- 
lent to  that  represented  by  not  less  than  two  years'  pro- 
fessional experience  in  geology  or  by  at  least  two  years' 
graduate  work ;  ability  to  read  scientific  French,  or  Ger- 
man, or  an  equivalent  foreign  language,  and  to  prepare, 
in  clear  and  concise  English,  manuscripts  dealing  with 
work  in  geology. 

Principal  Lines  of  Promotion 

From:  Junior  Geologist. 
To :  Associate  Geologist. 

Compensation  for  Class 

Annual:  $2,400,  $2,520,  $2,640,  $2,760,  $2,880,  $3,000. 

Title  of  Class: 
ASSOCIATE  GEOLOGIST 

Specifications  of  Class 
Duties : 

Under  general  administrative  and  technical  direction, 
to  perform  individually,  or  to  direct  with  assistants,  spe- 
cialized work  in  geology  requiring  experience  and  proven 
ability;  to  exercise  independent  judgment  and  to  assume 
responsibilities  in  the  solution  of  geologic  problems  and  in 


SPECIFICATIONS  FOR   WORKERS  55 

the  preparation  of  reports ;  to  be  in  responsible  charge  of 
an  intermediate  subdivision  in  an  organization  doing  geo- 
logic work ;  and  to  perform  related  work  as  required. 

Examples :  Having  charge  of  a  geologic  field  party 
or  small  group  of  parties,  or  of  a  specific  geologic  inves- 
tigation, or  of  an  intermediate  subdivision  in  an  organi- 
zation dealing  with  geologic  problems;  preparing  reports 
upon  a  geologic  field,  or  upon  a  particular  mineral  re- 
source or  group  of  resources. 

Qualifications : 

Training  equivalent  to  that  represented  by  graduation 
with  a  degree  from  an  institution  of  recognized  standing, 
with  major  work  in  geolog}';  additional  training  equiva- 
lent to  that  represented  either  (i)  by  not  less  than  five 
years'  professional  experience  in  work  of  the  grade  re- 
quired of  an  Assistant  Geologist,  or  (2)  by  not  less 
than  three  years'  graduate  work ;  ability  to  read  scientific 
French  or  German,  or  an  equivalent  foreign  language, 
and  to  prepare,  in  clear  and  concise  English,  manu- 
scripts embodying  the  results  of  investigations  in  geology. 

Principal  Lines  of  Promotion 

From:  Assistant  Geologist. 
To:  Geologist. 

Compensation  for  Class 
Annual :  $3,240,  $3,360,  $3,480,  $3,600,  $3,720,  $3,840. 

Title  of  Class  : 
GEOLOGIST 

Specifications  of  Class 
Duties : 

To  perform,  under  general  administrative  direction,  one 
or  more  of  the  following  functions:  (i)  To  carry  on 
individually  or  with  associates  or  through  subordinates, 
highly  specialized  investigations  in  geology;  (2)  to  plan 
and  execute  major  fines  of  work  in  geology;  (3)  to  act 
in   a   consulting   or   advisory   capacity   on   problems    in 


56         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

geology;  or  (4)  to  have  responsible  charge  of,  and  to 
initiate  or  execute  policies  for,  a  major  administrative 
unit  dealing  vi^ith  geologic  problems ;  and  to  perform  other 
related  work. 

Qualifications : 

Training  equivalent  to  that  represented  by  graduation 
with  a  degree  from  an  institution  of  recognized  standing, 
with  major  work  in  geology;  additional  training  equiva- 
lent to  that  represented  either  (i)  by  not  less  than  eight 
years'  professional  experience  or  (2)  by  not  less  than 
three  years'  graduate  work  in  geology  and  at  least  five 
years'  professional  experience,  of  which  experience,  in 
either  case,  not  less  than  three  years  shall  have  been  in 
work  of  the  grade  required  of  an  Associate  Geologist ; 
proven  ability  to  direct  or  to  perform  specialized  work  in 
geology ;  ability  to  read  scientific  French  or  German,  or 
an  equivalent  foreign  language,  and  to  prepare,  in  clear 
and  concise  English,  manuscripts  embodying  the  results 
of  investigations  in  geology. 

Principal  Lines  of  Promotion 

From:  Associate  Geologist. 

To :  Senior  Geologist ;  Director,  Geological  Survey. 

Compensation  for  Class 
Annual:  $4,140,  $4,320,  $4,500,  $4,680,  $4,860,  $5,040. 

Title  of  Class: 
SENIOR  GEOLOGIST 

Specifications  of  Class 
Duties : 

To  perform  one  or  more  of  the  following  functions: 
(i)  To  perform  or  direct  the  most  difficult  and  compre- 
hensive advanced  work  in  geolog}' ;  (2)  to  act  as  con- 
sulting specialist  in  the  field  of  geology;  or  (3)  to  dis- 
charge major  administrative  duties  involving  the  deter- 
mination of  broad  lines  of  policy  under  the  limitations 


SPECIFICATIONS  FOR  WORKERS  57 

imposed  by  existing  laws,  regulations,  or  other  fixed  re- 
quirements ;  and  to  perform  other  related  work. 

Qualifications : 

Training  equavalent  to  that  represented  by  graduation 
with  a  degree  from  an  institution  of  recognized  standing, 
with  major  work  in  geology;  additional  training  equiva- 
lent to  that  represented  either  ( i)  by  at  least  twelve  years' 
professional  experience,  or  (2)  by  not  less  than  three 
years'  graduate  work  in  geology  and  at  least  eight  years' 
professional  experience,  of  which  experience,  in  either 
case,  not  less  than  four  years  shall  have  been  in  work 
of  the  grade  required  of  a  Geologist;  large  capacity  and 
proven  ability  to  perform  and  direct  advanced  work  in 
geology. 

Principal  Lines  of  Promotion 

From:  Geologist. 

To:  Director,  Geological  Survey. 

Compensation  for  Class 

(Recommended  by  Civil  Service  Commission  to  Con- 
gress.) 

Title  of  Class: 

DIRECTOR,  QEOLOGICAL  SURVEY 

Specifications  of  Class 
Duties : 

Under  the  general  direction  of  the  Secretary  of  the 
Interior,  to  have  administrative  charge  of  all  the  activi- 
ties of  the  Geological  Survey ;  to  be  responsible  for  its 
expenditures  and  the  efficiency  of  its  employees ;  to  in- 
itiate and  direct  research- in  pure  and  applied  geology  and 
related  subjects ;  to  consider  and  take  action  on  questions 
concerning  geology  referred  by  the  Secretary ;  and  to 
perform  other  related  work. 

Qualifications : 

Training  equivalent  to  that  represented  by  graduation 
with  a  degree  from  an  institution  of  recognized  standing, 


58         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

with  major  work  in  science,  and  by  three  years'  graduate  ! 
work  in  geology;  extended  experience  in  the  application  • 
of  scientific  methods  of  research  to  the  solution  of 
problems  in  geology  and  related  subjects;  not  less  than 
five  years'  responsible  administrative  experience ;  ability 
to  determine  productive  lines  of  research  relating  to  ge- 
ology, and  to  organize  and  direct  staffs  of  investigators 
and  regulatory  workers. 

Principal  Lines  of  Promotion 

From:  Senior  Geologist;  Geologist. 

Compensation  for  Class 


(Recommended  by  Civil  Service  Commission  to  Con- 
gress.) 

The  shrinkage  of  the  dollar  to  a  purchasing  value  of 
about  forty-three  cents  at  this  writing  has  borne  heavily 
upon  professional  workers,  who  are  commonly  in  receipt 
of  fixed  salaries  or  relatively  fixed  incomes,  barely  adequate 
even  with  a  normal  dollar ;  and  who  have  seen  them  cut  in 
half  by  the  present  cost  of  living.  The  acuteness  of  the 
situation,  combined  with  the  enlarged  demand  for  profes- 
sional workers  at  more  ample  salaries  in  industry  and  com- 
merce, has  been  forcing  salaries  upward  in  the  independent 
professions,  although  they  have  not  yet  regained  their 
former  value  nor  caught  up  with  present  price  levels.  It  is 
important  not  to  be  dazzled  by  the  mere  number  of  dol- 
lars in  new  salary  scales,  but  to  ask  how  far  they  are 
merely  just  restorations  of  old  salaries ;  how  far,  genuine 
increases.  Perhaps  the  most  valuable  results  of  the  wide- 
spread salary  agitation  lie  in  the  reconsideration  which  it 
has  brought  about  of  the  principles  which  should  underlie 
the  building  of  professional  salary  schedules,  and  the  deep- 
ened consciousness  among  professional  workers  that  they 
should  be  fully  informed  of  these  principles  and  even  have 
a  share  in  determining  them.  If  the  great  college  and  uni- 
versity "drives"  for  endowment  bring  about  published  sal- 
ary schedules  and  published  statements  of  the  grounds  and 


SPECIFICATIONS  FOR  WORKERS  59 

methods  of  promotion,  they  will  do  more  for  the  profes- 
sional spirit  and  morale  of  college  teachers  than  even  the 
raising  of  wretchedly  inadequate  salaries  to  something  more 
nearly  approaching  a  professional  "wage  of  decency  and 
comfort."  The  salary  movement,  in  fact,  is  forcing  in 
every  profession  the  formal  or  informal  drafting  of  speci- 
fications of  duties  and  qualifications,  lines  of  promotion, 
and  salary  ranges ;  and  there  are  new  obligations  on  the  side 
of  the  worker  as  well  as  on  the  side  of  the  employer  and 
prospects  of  better  mutual  understanding  and  good  will. 

Price  levels  are  still  so  unsettled,  and  salaries  are  still  so 
actively  in  process  of  readjustment  that  it  is  hardly  safe 
to  quote  figures  which  are  likely  to  become  obsolete  by  the 
time  they  are  in  print.  The  experience  of  the  past  six 
years  has  shown  the  necessity  of  periodic  revisions  of  sal- 
ary schedules,  since,  particularly  in  teaching  and  in  gov- 
ernment service,  salaries  once  determiined  tend  to  persist 
without  change  for  ten  or  even  twenty  years.  Index  num- 
bers of  the  cost  of  living  afford  a  convenient  scale  by  means 
of  which  to  make  needed  readjustments.  The  rate  for  suit- 
able room  and  board  furnishes  a  rough  practical  measure. 
The  American  Association  for  Labor  Legislation  has 
adopted  an  elastic  system,  based  on  current  index  numbers, 
at  the  suggestion  of  Professor  Irving  Fisher.^ 

Since  the  close  of  the  war,  a  number  o.f  professional  or- 
ganizations, in  addition  to  the  colleges,  have  been  studying 
existing  salaries  and  suggesting  or  adopting  higher  and  more 
standardized  schedules.  Among  them  may  be  mentioned  the 
Congressional  Joint  Commission  on  Reclassification  of  Sal- 
aries, which  has  studied  current  rates  of  compensation  in 
parallel  non-governmental  employments,  and  which  asked 
the  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics  to  prepare  minimum  "health 
and  decency"  budgets  for  a  single  man,  a  single  woman,  and 
a  family  of  five  in  clerical  service  in  Washington ;-  the  Na- 
tional Education  Association  f  and  chambers  of  Commerce 

^Shifting  Wages  with  the  Cost  of  Living.    Red  Cross   Magazine. 
January,  1920. 

*  Report  (March,  1920)   and  Monthly  Labor  Review.     December, 
1919,  January,  1920. 

•  E.  S.  Evenden.     Teachers'  Salaries  and  Salary  Schedidcs.     Oc- 
tober, 1919. 


6o         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

through  the  American  City  Bureau ;  ^  the  American  Asso- 
ciation for  Organizing  Family  Social  Work ;  ^  the  Minne- 
apolis Council  of  Social  Agencies ;  ^  the  Engineering  Coun- 
cil ;  *  the  Young  Women's  ^  Christian  Associations ;  the 
Bureau  of  Vocational  Information.^  It  is  interesting  to 
compare  the  minimum  budget  for  a  woman  government 
clerk,  estimated  at  $1,151.15  on  the  basis  of  prices  pre- 
vaiHng  in  Washington  in  September,  1919,  with  the  mini- 
mum budgets  for  teachers  at  the  levels  of  "existence," 
"thrift,"  and  "culture"  or  improvement,  prepared  by  the 
Massachusetts  Teachers'  Federation  and  standing  at  $1,382, 
$1,612,  and  $1,812  respectively.^  The  case-work  study  rec- 
ommends a  minimum  salary  of  $1,200  for  a  case-worker 
with  one  year  of  professional  training.  Dr.  Evenden  recom- 
mends a  minimum  of  $1,200  with  six  annual  increments  of 
$100  for  a  teacher  with  two  years  of  normal  training;  of 
$1,400  for  a  teacher  with  an  A.  B.  degree;  $1,600  for  a 
teacher  with  an  A.  M.  degree ;  and  $2,000  for  a  teacher  with 
a  Ph.D.  degree,  the  last  three  with  ten  annual  increments 
of  $100,  making  the  maximum  salaries  $1,800,  $2,400, 
$2,600,  and  $3,000  respectively.  The  American  Federation 
of  Teachers  recommends  a  minimum  teachers'  salary  of 
$2,000.  Leland  Stanford  Junior  University  established  the 
following  salary  schedule  in  November,  1919,  representing 
advances  of  from  18  to  50  per  cent :  Instructors,  $1,800- 
$2,400;  assistant  professors,  $2,5oo-$3,ooo ;  associate  pro- 
fessors, $3,25o-$4,ooo ;  professors,  $4,5oo-$7,5oo. 

On  the  basis  of  these  and  other  figures,  tentative  and 
shifting  as  they  are,  it  is  perhaps  not  misleading  to  suggest 
the  following  tentative  salary  schedule,  to  be  used  as  a  basis 

*  Know  and  Help  Your  Schools  (1920). 

'Expenditures    and    Salaries    of    Case    Workers.      The    Family. 
March,  April,  1920. 
'Positions  in  Social  Work  in  Minneapolis.     1920. 

*  Report  of  Comtnittee  on  Classification  and  Compensation  of  En- 
gineers.   December,  1919. 

'Report  on  Salaries  and  Living  of  Employed  OfUcers.  April, 
1920.  (Unpublished.)  Vocations  for  Business  and  Professional 
Women.     May,   1919. 

'Bulletins  on  Women  in  Chemistry,  Statistics,  Law,  and  Depart- 
ment Stores  (1920-1921). 

''School  Life.     U.  S.  Bureau  of  Education.     January  15,  1920. 


< 


SPECIFICATIONS  FOR  WORKERS  6i 

of   comparison,    for   the    various    grades    of    professional 
worker  given  on  page  34. 

1.  Learner  in  service $i,200-$i,400 

2.  Service  worker  under  supervision.  ..  .   $i,50o-$2,ooo 

3.  Supervisor  or  instructor $2,oc)0-$3,ooo 

4.  Non-administrative  technical  expert .  .  $2,500-$3,500  up 

5.  Administrative  expert $3,500  up 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  "learned  professions"  :  MEDICINE,  LAW,  THE  MINISTRY 

Medicine,  law,  and  divinity,  the  three  "learned  profes- 
sions," come  to  us  from  the  medieval  universities,  which 
were  essentially  professional  schools — in  their  earlier  form 
guilds  of  teachers  and  scholars.  They  have  always  pre- 
served their  strong  group  spirit  and  emphasis  upon  special 
training  of  an  intellectual  character,  and  in  these  respects 
have  served  as  models  for  the  newer  professions. 

Their  definite  organization  and  strong  sense  of  prestige 
have  tended  to  make  the  learned  professions  conservative 
and  undemocratic,  but  at  the  same  time  have  given  them  un- 
usual capacity  for  effective  group  action,  strikingly  illus- 
trated during  the  war,  when  there  was  a  country-wide 
registration  of  doctors  to  determine  resources  for  both  over- 
seas and  home  service  and  a  mobilization  of  lawyers  for 
service  on  draft-boards,  in  connection  with  war-risk  insur- 
ance, and  for  other  legal  work.  The  medical  and  legal  pro- 
fessions have  undoubtedly  gained  a  new  sense  of  responsibil- 
ity for  government  and  community  programs,  a  new  power 
of  cooperating  with  other  professions,  a  new  realization  of 
the  distribution  and  services  of  their  members.^  The  great 
campaign  for  public  health,  well  begun  before  the  war,  has 
received  an  incalculable  impetus.  The  modern  idea  of 
"group  medicine"  ^  as  over  against  the  old  idea  of  "private 
practice"  has  notably  advanced.  There  are  even  glimmer- 
ings of  "group  law." 

In  all  these  enterprises  and  tendencies  professional  women 

*  It  is  estimated  that  before  the  war  there  was  one  doctor  to  about 
850  persons  in  the  United  States;  one  to  about  2,000  persons  in 
Europe.  The  ratio  of  lawyers  was  one  to  about  700  persons  as 
against  one  to  i.ioo  in   Great  Britain. 

'  See  Richard  C.  Cabot.  Training  and  Rewards  of  the  Physician 
(1918),  Chapter  11. 

62 


MEDICINE,  LAW,  THE  MINISTRY  63 

have  shared  and  are  sharing,  although  they  still  have  to 
meet  certain  barriers  to  admission  to  professional  schools 
and  professional  associations.  In  spite  of  the  shortage  of 
physicians,  women  doctors  were  employed  by  the  govern- 
ment during  the  war  only  as  "contract  surgeons."  More 
difficult  to  overcome  than  these  disappearing  formal  limi- 
tations, has  been  the  widespread  feeling  among  physicians 
and  lawyers  that  theirs  are  men's  professions,  and  that 
women,  no  matter  how  well  trained,  are  outsiders  and  in- 
truders. Some  of  the  leaders  in  each  profession  have  not 
held  this  view ;  the  war  has  done  something  to  shake  it ; 
socialized  medicine  and  law  and  the  new  political  status 
of  women  are  all  helping  to  do  away  with  it. 

Nevertheless,  this  attitude  on  the  part  of  professional 
men  has  played  its  part  in  deterring  women  from  entering 
medicine  and  law.  The  length  and  cost  of  training  and 
the  difficulty  of  establishing  an  independent  practice  have 
been  other  influences.  In  the  early  days  of  the  movements 
for  higher  education  and  equal  suffrage,  pioneer  women 
of  a  high  type  studied  both  law  and  medicine.  The  first 
woman  doctor,  Elizabeth  Blackwell,  received  her  medical 
degree  as  long  ago  as  1848.  But  with  the  realization  of  the 
practical  obstacles  and  with  the  development  of  other  fields 
of  work  for  women,  notably  social  service,  there  was  a 
falling  off  in  the  relative  numbers  of  women  doctors  and 
lawyers.  By  1910,  although  the  number  of  medical  schools 
open  to  women  had  increased,  the  relative  number  of  women 
students  had  diminished.  In  the  ministry,  the  facts  that  only 
certain  Protestant  churches  ordain  women,  and  that  there 
is  little  public  knowledge  of  it  as  a  profession  for  women, 
have  limited  numbers.  Once  in  the  ministry,  however, 
women  have  probably  had  to  face  less  opposition  than  in  the 
other  learned  professions. 

The  past  ten  years  have  been  an  era  of  marked  advance 
in  American  medicine.  The  Carnegie  Report  on  Medical 
Education  in  1910  and  the  educational  activities  of  the  Amer- 
ican Medical  Association  have  enormously  improved  the 
standards  of  medical  schools ;  the  Rockefeller  endowments 
have  fostered  medical  research;  federal  and  state  goveri*- 


64         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

ments  and  great  private  organizations  have  developed  large 
public  health  programs ;  universities  have  established  schools 
and  courses  in  public  health.  Since  1916  the  American 
Medical  Association  has  required  a  full  high-school  course 
and  at  least  two  years  of  college  work  including  pre-profes- 
sional  courses  in  science  of  all  medical  schools  receiving  its 
approval.  Eighty-one  out  of  a  total  of  ninety  schools  meet 
this  requirement,  forty  of  them  reaching  it  within  the  past 
four  years.  Sixty  schools  now  admit  women,  including 
practically  all  the  leading  institutions.  The  schools  of  Johns 
Hopkins  University  and  Cornell  University  have  always 
admitted  them.  The  Harvard  Medical  School,  the  College 
of  Physicians  and  Surgeons  of  Columbia  University,  and 
the  medical  school  of  Washington  University  in  Saint  Louis 
were 'Opened  to  them  in  1918.  A  number  of  the  best 
schools  now  require  a  year  of  interneship  of  all  graduates. 
This  is  an  essential  part  of  modern  medical  education  from 
which  women  have  in  the  past  too  frequently  been  shut  out. 
The  changes  in  the  spirit,  objects,  and  standards  of  medi- 
cine within  the  decade  are  drawing  into  the  profession  a 
larger  number  of  women,  and  there  is  evidence  of  a  rap- 
idly increasing  interest  in  it  on  the  part  of  the  present  gen- 
eration of  women  college  students.  The  1910  census  re- 
ported 9,015  women  doctors,  6  per  cent  of  the  membership 
of  the  profession.  The  Census  of  Women  Physicians  com- 
piled in  1918  by  the  Medical  Women's  National  Associa- 
tion gives  the  names  of  some  six  thousand  doctors  by 
states,  showing  the  medical  schools  of  which  they  are  gradu- 
ates, their  membership  in  medical  societies,  and  whether 
they  are  in  active  practice.  It  likewise  contains  lists  of 
medical  women  who  are  laboratory  experts,  roentgenolo- 
gists, and  anaesthetists.  The  Biennial  Survey  of  Education 
for  1917-1918  of  the  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Education  shows  for 
the  latter  year  a  total  of  13,630  medical  students,  both  men 
and  women.  Of  these,  93.3  per  cent  were  enrolled  in  the 
higher  standard  medical  schools.  In  1904  out  of  a  total 
of  28,142  medical  students,  only  6.2  per  cent  were  so  en- 
rolled. The  figures  speak  volumes  for  the  improvement 
in  the  quaHty  of  the  medical  profession  and  the  disappear- 
ance of  the  appalling  oversupply  of  poorly  equipped  medi- 


MEDICINE,  LAW,  THE  MINISTRY  65 

cal  practitioners.  There  should  be  organized  efforts  to 
increase  medical  scholarships  and  fellowships  for  women 
college  students  of  high  capacity  and  interest  in  medicine 
as  a  career. 

The  medical  profession  to-day  offers  widening  and  in- 
creasingly varied  opportunities  for  women,  especially  in  con- 
nection with  promotion  of  the  health  of  children,  of  girls 
and  women  in  industry,  of  the  community,  and  of  the  home. 
There  is  crying  need  of  them  in  work  with  delinquents. 
The  International  Conference  of  Women  Physicians  held 
in  New  York  in  the  autumn  of  1919  through  the  efforts  of 
the  National  Board  of  Young  Women's  Christian  Associa- 
tions,  focused  attention  upon  the  part  to  be  played  by  medi- 
cal women  in  the  great  movements  for  preventive  medi- 
cine, public  health,  social  and  mental  hygiene.  The  con- 
ference drew  up  a  comprehensive  program  for  social  health.^ 
While  there  is  undoubtedly  a  shrinkage  in  the  opportunities 
for  the  older  type  of  "private  practice,"  the  ramifications 
of  health  activity  and  health  interest  are  creating  all  sorts 
of  new  demands  for  physicians  of  modern  training  and 
modern  spirit.^ 

Medical  women  find  salaried  positions  in  connection  with 
(i)  educational  institutions;  (2)  hospitals  and  other  insti- 
tutions for  dependents  and  delinquents;  (3)  public  depart- 
ments or  boards;  (4)  industrial  and  commercial  firms;  (5) 
health  and  social  organizations ;  (6)  research  and  diagnostic 
laboratories;  (7)  health  publicity.  In  these  fields  their  work 
may  be  administrative  or  supervisory,  instructional,  in- 
spectional,  or  laboratory;  and  they  may  also  engage  in  a 
certain  amount  of  actual  treatment  of  cases. 

Colleges  and  schools  have  long  had  resident  physicians, 
who  have  sometinaes  been  also  professors  of  physiology 
and  hygiene.  With  the  growth  of  more  constructive  ideas 
of  health  education,  women  physicians  are  directors  of  col- 
lege departments  of  health  or  in  charge  of  departments  of 
physical  education,  sometimes  taking  special  training  in  or- 
der to  direct  this  work.     At  least  one  doctor  in  such  de- 

^  Sun'cy.    November  15,  1919. 

'  See  Richard  C.  Cabot.  Training  and  Rewards  of  the  Physician 
(1918). 


66         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

partments  should  be  a  specialist  in  mental  hygiene.  With 
one  or  two  brilliant  exceptions,  women  instructors  in  medi- 
cal schools  have  been  rare,  except  in  schools  exclusively  for 
women.  But  they  are  slowly  increasing.  A  distinguished 
woman  specialist  in  industrial  diseases  has  recently  re 
ceived  an  appointment  to  the  faculty  of  the  Harvard  Medi- 
cal School.  Women  not  infrequently  serve  as  school  doc- 
tors or  medical  inspectors  in  city  school  systems. 

Other  types  of  institution,  hospitals  and  mental  hospitals, 
prisons,  reformatories,  schools  for  defectives,  frequently 
have  resident  physicians.  In  some  states,  every  public  men- 
tal hospital  must  have  a  woman  on  its  medical  staff.  Insti- 
tutions for  delinquents  are  coming  to  recognize  the  impor- 
tance of  psychiatrists  and  psychologists.  A  few  women 
physicians  are  superintendents  of  institutions  for  women 
and  children.  In  state  or  city  departments  of  health  medi- 
cal women  have  served  for  the  most  part  as  assistants,  espe- 
cially in  laboratory  positions.  Many  are  institutional  bac- 
teriologists and  pathologists.  But  a  woman  doctor  has  been 
health  officer  of  Portland,  Oregon,  and  another,  a  college 
graduate,  holds  that  position  in  Poughkeepsie,  New  York. 
Women  doctors  are  being  appointed  directors  of  the  bu- 
reaus of  child  hygiene  which  are  being  created  in  states 
and  cities  throughout  the  country.  Dr.  S.  Josephine  Baker 
has  long  held  this  important  position  in  New  York  City. 
They  have  played  a  leading  part  in  the  admirable  studies 
of  infant  mortality  and  child  health  made  by  the  federal 
Children's  Bureau,  and  have  been  employed  in  a  few  other 
federal  services. 

Industrial  and  commercial  medicine  are  new  fields ;  but 
they  are  developing  with  great  rapidity,  and  passing  from 
their  earlier  stages  of  routine  examination  and  treatment  to 
constructive  health  activities  for  employees.  Women  phy- 
sicians have  large  opportunities  for  health  education  with 
factory  women,  saleswomen  in  department  stores,  clerks  in 
great  insurance  and  financial  corporations,  operators  in  tele- 
phone companies.  The  most  effective  relations  among  doc- 
tors, nurses,  and  social  workers  in  these  fields  are  still  to 
be  worked  out.  Some  of  the  insurance  companies  employ 
women  medical  examiners  for  women  applicants;  and  at 


MEDICINE,  LAW,  THE  MINISTRY  67 

least  one  has  gone  into  extensive  health  work  for  its  policy 
holders  throughout  the  country. 

Health  and  social  organizations  of  many  kinds  are  em- 
ploying women  doctors.  Anti-tuberculosis  work  has  long 
been  a  meeting-ground  of  doctor,  nurse,  and  social  worker. 
The  new  fields  of  social  hygiene  and  mental  hygiene  call 
imperatively  for  the  intimate  cooperation  of  doctors,  nurses, 
teachers,  social  workers,  civic  workers,  industrial  relations 
workers.  The  American  Social  Hygiene  Association,  the 
Bureau  of  Social  Hygiene  of  the  Rockefeller  Foundation, 
the  Social  Morality  Committee  of  the  War  Work  Council 
of  the  Young  Women's  Christian  Associations,  all  con- 
tributed to  the  carrying  out  of  the  government's  great  pro- 
gram for  checking  venereal  disease  in  the  army  and  launch- 
ing a  country-wide  campaign  of  sex  education  and  progres- 
sive sex  legislation.  These  and  other  organizations  are 
continuing  the  movement  in  cooperation  with  the  United 
States  Public  Health  Service  and  state  and  city  health  au- 
thorities. Even  more  important,  as  more  comprehensive, 
is  the  mental  hygiene  movement,  directed  by  the  National 
Committee  for  Mental  Hygiene  and  its  cooperating  state 
societies.  Women  psychiatrists  are  needed  in  many  fields, 
especially  in  protective  and  corrective  work  with  women 
and  girls,  in  education,  and  in  industry.  Hitherto  their 
opportunities  have  been  chiefly  in  connection  with  men- 
tal hospitals.  But  more  general  recognition  of  the 
prevalence  of  unstable  and  psychopathic  persons  in  the  com- 
munity and  of  the  value  of  preventive  work  with  children 
and  young  people  is  greatly  enlarging  these  opportunities 
and  calling  for  a  new  type  of  training  and  experience.  Some 
women  psychiatrists  have  already  established  themselves  as 
independent  practitioners  and  consultants. 

In  laboratories,  public  or  private,  women  doctors  are 
scientific  workers  rather  than  exclusively  medical  workers. 
Many  laboratory  workers  are  not  doctors ;  and  there  is  con- 
siderable difference  of  opinion  as  to  the  necessity  or  even 
desirability  of  a  medical  degree.  It  is  probably  the  part 
of  wisdom  at  present  for  a  laboratory  worker  to  acquire 
this  degree  to  insure  the  respect  and  cooperation  of  the  doc- 
tors with  whom  she  works,  just  as  it  is  for  a  psychologist. 


68         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

The  assistant  director  of  the  great  research  laboratories 
of  the  New  York  City  Department  of  Health  is  a  woman. 

The  field  of  health  publicity  and  popular  education  in 
health  matters  has  been  greatly  enlarged  through  the  va- 
rious health  campaigns  of  the  war.  Women  doctors  have 
been  employed  as  field  lecturers ;  they  have  prepared  health 
literature  for  popular  distribution ;  they  have  organized  ex- 
tension courses  in  health ;  they  have  directed  "health  drives." 
This  work  is  usually  supplementary  to  other  employment 
or  of  a  temporary  character.  It  calls  for  women  of  ex- 
perience and  reputation. 

Women  have  studied  and  practiced  dentistry  for  many 
years;  but  their  number  has  not  increased.  The  1910  cen- 
sus reported  1,254  women  dentists,  three  per  cent  of  the 
profession.  In  1916  only  twenty-one  women  were  gradu- 
ated from  forty-eight  schools  of  dentistry.  There  are  new 
tendencies  in  dentistry,  however,  which  may  lead  to  a 
greater  interest  in  it  on  the  part  of  women.  Recognition 
of  the  primary  importance  to  health  of  oral  medicine  and 
surgery  is  requiring  of  the  dentist  medical  as  well  as  den- 
tal training.  The  establishment  of  dental  clinics  and  dental 
work  in  schools  indicates  the  place  which  preventive  work 
in  this  field  is  assuming.  Dental  education  is  following 
medical  education  in  raising  standards. 

Medicine  to-day  should  attract  young  women  of  the  high- 
est type  of  intelligence,  character,  and  general  education. 
The  minimum  requirement  of  two  years  of  college  work  is 
not  enough  for  eventual  leadership  and  for  the  cultural  sat- 
isfactions and  contacts  needed  in  a  life  of  strenuous  pro- 
fessional endeavor.  The  committee  on  pre-medical  college 
work  of  the  Council  on  Medical  Education  in  its  report 
of  February,  1918,  calls  for  at  least  sixty  semester  hours 
of  college  study.  Courses  required  are  chemistry,  physics, 
biology,  English  composition  and  literature,  and  twelve 
hours  of  non-science  subjects ;  courses  strongly  urged  are 
French  or  German,  psychology,  advanced  mathematics,  ad- 
vanced botany  or  zoology,  and  additional  courses  in  chem- 
istry ;  courses  suggested  include  economics,  sociology,  his- 
tory, political  science,  logic,  mathematics,  Latin,  Greek,  and 
drawing.    With  the  new  social  and  psychological  resppnsi- 


MEDICINE,  LAW,  THE  MINISTRY  69 

bilities  of  medicine,  courses  in  psychology,  economics,  and 
sociology,  and  attention  to  the  arts  and  to  the  art  of  living 
are  essential. 

Women  students  should  choose  a  medical  school  requir- 
ing a  year  of  interneship,  and  should  look  forward  to  some 
graduate  work.  If  they  prefer  a  school  for  women  only, 
such  as  the  Woman's  Medical  College  of  Pennsylvania, 
they  should  plan  for  a  year  soon  after  at  a  university  medi- 
cal school.  Women  doctors  going  into  public  health  work 
are  also  .taking  graduate  courses  leading  to  the  degree  of 
doctor  of  public  health.  Medical  training  is  long  and  ex- 
acting, and  women  entering  upon  it  should  have  robust^ 
health,  nervous  stability,  tenacity  of  purpose,  and  natural 
sagacity  with  regard  to  human  beings  and  human  affairs. 
For  such  women  medicine  is  a  profession  of  assured  stand- 
ing and  usefulness,  and  it  is  rich  in  intellectual  and  human 
satisfactions.^ 

Women  doctors  are  found  increasingly  in  salaried  po- 
sitions ;  but  there  are  genuine  social  opportunities  and  valu- 
able supplementary  training  in  general  practice,  especially 
in  the  small  town  or  country  neighborhood  or  the  crowded 
quarters  of  a  great  city.  A  woman  beginning  independent 
practice  will  do  well  to  have  enough  money  to  carry  herself 
for  a  year  while  she  is  establishing  herself  in  a  community. 
Dr.  Cabot  says :  "Few  doctors  have  ever  grown  rich  from 
their  medical  fees,  and  if  I  read  the  signs  of  the  times 
rightly  the  number  of  doctors  with  incomes  above  $5,ocK) 
a  year  is  going  to  be  smaller  in  the  future  than  in  the 
past."^ 

Vocations  for  Business  and  Professional  Women,  says 
that  medical  women  as  a  group  are  earning  more  than 
women  in  other  professions.  It  gives  the  following  salary 
ranges:  doctors  in  educational  institutions,  about  $1,800  and 
maintenance;  in  state  institutions,  from  $1,600  to  $2,600  and 
maintenance;  in  social  agencies  beginning  at  $1,800  or 
$2,000;  in  research  laboratories  from  $900  to  $3,000.  l\,ight 
doctors  and  one  dentist  filling  our  schedules  report  salaries 
ranging  from  $1,200  and  maintenance  (easily  equivalent  to 

'Cabot.  Training  and  Rewards  of  the  Physician.  Chapter  Xil, 
pp.  40-51,  133-136. 


70         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

$500  in  these  days)  to  $5,100,  with  a  median  salary  of 
$2,600.  Two  of  these  women  are  professors  and  deans, 
one  in  a  medical  school,  one  in  a  school  of  oral  hygiene ;  one 
is  instructor  in  psychiatry  in  a  university  medical  school; 
one  is  a  school  medical  inspector ;  two  are  resident  phy- 
sicians in  mental  hospitals ;  one  is  superintendent  of  a  re- 
formatory for  women;  one  is  director  of  a  city  bureau  of 
child  hygiene ;  two  are  special  investigators  in  the  federal 
Department  of  Labor  in  child  hygiene  and  in  industrial 
poisoning;  one  is  physician  and  mental  examiner  in  a  girls' 
protective  association.  Five  of  these  women  are  college 
graduates ;  two  are  doctors  of  public  health  as  well  as  doc- 
tors of  medicine.  Among  them  are  several  of  the  best 
known  women  doctors  in  the  country. 

Their  comments  are  worth  noting.  The  investigator  of 
industrial  diseases,  an  authority  in  her  field,  says :  "I  think 
that  a  woman  with  an  interest  in  new  problems  and  in  the 
protection  of  working  people  would  find  work  such  as  this 
very  satisfying.  SlTe  would  need  a  medical  degree  .  .  .  and 
some  experience  among  .  .  .  working  people,  organized  and 
unorganized.  .  .  .  Each  industry  I  take  up  must  be  mas- 
tered first  in  all  essential  details.  All  foreign  literature  on 
the  subject  must  be  studied." 

The  school  medical  inspector  says  :  "After  being  a  teacher 
in  common  schools,  study  medicine,  after  which  take  the 
course  leading  to  Doctor  of  Public  Health." 

The  physician  with  a  girls'  protective  association  says : 
"It  is  desirable  to  have  actual  clinical  experience  with  de- 
linquents rather  than  to  depend  on  abstract  laboratory  train- 
ing." 

A  pathologist  in  a  state  mental  hospital  says :  "There  are 
good  openings  for  women  physicians  in  pathological  work, 
and  it  is  a  specialty  for  which  they  are  well  fitted.  .  .  . 
When  there  is  a  chance  for  advancement,  men,  even  young 
ones,  are  always  chosen,  as  the  plan  is  to  fit  the  most  promis- 
ing ones  for  the  more  responsible  positions  in  the  state  hos- 
pital service.  .  .  .  Men  take  a  position  as  pathologist  only 
as  a  beginning.  .  .  .  The  more  mature  men  are  given  the 
position  of  clinical  director  and  pathologist,  which  demands 
more  equipment,  carries  more  authority,  and  naturally  a 


MEDICINE,  LAW,  THE  MINISTRY  71 

higher  salary.   Women  are  not  ehgible  for  clinical  director." 

Law  is  a  profession  much  less  commonly  entered  by 
women  than  is  medicine.  Its  standards  and  methods  of 
training  are  far  less  well  established,  and  it  has  been  less 
affected  by  the  modern  social  spirit.  It  may  be  said  to  be 
the  most  conservative  of  all  professions.  Nevertheless, 
there  are  signs  that  it  is  entering  upon  a  period  of  re- 
organization, standardization,  and  socialization  such  as  that 
through  which  medicine  has  already  passed.  It  suffers  from 
being  dominated  by  the  spirit  of  precedent  rather  than  by 
the  spirit  of  scientific  inquiry  and  through  its  intimate  re- 
lations with  the  details  of  politics  and  business.  But  it 
has  always  commanded  the  interest  and  services  of  men 
of  the  highest  ability ;  and  its  professional  contribution  to 
public  and  social  welfare,  the  securing  of  justice  in  human 
relations,  has  never  been  so  imperatively  needed. 

Law  is  an  overcrowded  profession,  as  medicine  was  be- 
fore the  standards  of  medical  education  were  raised.  An 
authority  on  legal  education  has  observed  that  it  is  to  be 
compared  not  so  much  with  medicine  alone  as  with  the 
group  containing  medicine,  nursing,  pharmacy,  and  mid- 
wifery. The  1910  census  found  1,343  women  lawyers; 
and  the  dean  of  a  law  school  estunat^s  that  there  are  now 
about  fifteen  hundred  women  members  of  the  bar.  The 
Bureau  of  Education  gives  a  total  of  687  women  law  stu- 
dents and  103  women  graduates  in  1916,  distributed  among 
124  law  schools.  Of  these  schools,  102  are  connected  with 
universities ;  22  are  independent  schools,  including  full-time 
day  schools,  evening  schools,  and  mixed  schools,  giving 
both  day  and  late  afternoon  or  evening  instruction.  The 
average  standard  course  is  three  years  in  length.  The  ma- 
jority of  women  students  are  still  to  be  found  in  evening 
or  mixed  schools.  Of  the  seven  law  schools  of  highest 
entrance  requirements,  Harvard,  Columbia,  and  Western 
Reserve  do  not  as  yet  admit  women.  The  Yale  Law  SchQal- 
was  opened  in  1919-1920  for  the  first  time  to  women  with 
a  satisfactory  college  degree.  The  University  of  Penn- 
sylvania Law  School,  also  on  a  full  graduate  basis,  has 
\)een  open  to  them  since  1898 ;  but  few  women  have  taken 


72         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

the  course.  The  dean  of  a  middle-western  university  law 
school  writes:  "The  attendance  of  women  in  the  law 
school  of  this  university  has  had  a  history  rather  hard 
to  account  for.  During  the  eighties  and  early  nineties  of 
the  last  century  there  were  usually  from  twenty  to  thirty 
women  in  the  law  school.  Then  the  number  began  to  de- 
cline, and  there  have  been  years  during  the  last  decade  when 
there  were  no  women  students  here.  Recently  the  number 
has  begun  to  increase  slightly.  .  .  ,  There  are  at  present  six 
women  in  the  law  school,  and  the  number  of  inquiries  from 
prospective  women  students  has  distinctly  increased  during 
the  last  year  or  so.  .  .  .  There  were  but  two  women  gradu- 
ates from  the  period  1907  to  1912.  We  have  had  three 
or  four  women  during  the  sixteen  years  of  my  connection 
with  this  law  school  who  have  made  real  successes  at  the 
bar,  and  two  of  them  I  would  count  among  the  ablest  stu- 
dents we  have  had  during  that  period." 

According  to  the  Carnegie  Foundation  for  the  Advance- 
ment of  Teaching  ^  the  number  of  men  students  in  law 
schools  fell  off  in  1918  about  seventy  per  cent  on  account  of 
the  war.  The  number  of  women,  on  the  contrary,  increased 
over  twenty-six  per  cent,  from  five  to  seventeen  per  cent  of 
the  total  attendance.  This  increase,  however,  was  92.4  per 
cent  in  the  evening  schools  and  31.5  in  the  mixed  schools, 
while  there  was  a  slight  decrease  in  the  attendance  of 
women  upon  the  full-time  day  schools.  Such  evidence  in- 
dicates that  there  is  danger  of  a  supply  of  imperfectly 
trained  women  lawyers,  and  that  one  of  the  important  tasks 
immediately  ahead  is  the  active  encouragement  of  women 
students  in  full-time  law  schools  of  the  highest  standards. 
Fellowships  might  well  be  established  to  this  end. 

The  American  Bar  Association,  the  Association  of  Amer- 
ican Law  Schools,  the  United  States  Bureau  of  Education, 
and  the  division  of  Legal  education  of  the  Carnegie  Foun- 
dation are  all  actively  working  for  the  raising  of  the  stand- 
ards of  legal  education  and  state  requirements  for  admission 
to  the  bar.    These  last  vary  widely.^    The  recommendations 

^Thirteenth  Annual  Report  (1918). 

^  Women  in  the  Law  (1921),  Bulletin  3,  Bureau  of  Vocational 
Information. 


MEDICINE,  LAW,  THE  MINISTRY  73 

made  to  the  American  Bar  Association  in  1916  call  for  pre- 
liminary education  equal  to  that  required  for  admission  to  the 
state  university  or  the  standard  college  of  the  state ;  official 
registration  as  a  law  student,  and  four  years  of  legal  study, 
including  three  years  in  an  approved  law  school  and  one 
full  year  as  a  registered  clerk  in  a  law  office.  Many  of 
the  better  university  law  schools  already  require  two  years 
of  college  work  with  pre-professional  courses,  and  at  least 
three  require  college  graduation.  The  long  awaited  Carne- 
gie report  on  legal  education  will  probably  lead  to  as  great 
an  outcry  and  accomplish  as  much  good  as  the  famous  re- 
port on  medical  education  in  1910. 

In  the  meantime  there  is  a  strong  movement  within  the 
profession  for  the  simplification  of  American  legal  proce- 
dure, which  is  overburdened  with  precedent  and  detail,  and 
for  a  clearer  recognition  of  its  public  and  social  obliga- 
tions, a  greater  emphasis  upon  its  responsibilities  as  the 
guardian  of  essential  human  rights  and  the  furtherer  of 
justice  to  every  economic  and  social  group.  The  law  needs 
imperatively  men  and  women  who  are  not  merely  class- 
minded  and  property-minded,  but  who  bring  a  trained  and 
active  intelligence  to  bear  upon  the  difficult  problems  of 
justice  in  modern  human  relations.^ 

These    newer    developments    in    the    legal    profession 
strengthen  its  appeal  to  women.     Their  own  new  political 
status  tends  to  widen  their  legal  opportunities,  and   will 
enable  them  to  take  a  more  active  part  both  in  the  adminis- 
tration of  justice  and  in  the  promotion  of  sound  legisla- 
tion.    Many  women  lawyers  and  other  leaders  in  the  long 
fight  for  the  franchise  have  gained  an  extensive  legal  and 
political  education  which  they  are  putting  at  the  disposal 
not  only  of  inexperienced  women  voters  but  of  all  "for- 
gotten" and  handicapped  groups   in  the  population — for-^ 
eigners,  small  tenants  and  debtors,  unskilled  and  low-paid  \ 
wage  earners,  the  ignorant  and  helpless  and  exploited  every-    \- 
where.    Their  relative  detachment  from  vested  interests  and   j 
large  property  transactions  leaves  women   free  to  devote  / 
themselves  to  the  human  and  preventive  side  of  law,  to 

*The  Cleveland  Foundation  is  conducting  in  1920-192T  a  survey 
of  the  administration  of  justice  in  that  city. 


74         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

the  cause  of  "Justice  and  the  Poor,"  so  impressively  set 
forth  in  the  recent  Carnegie  bulletin  of  that  name,^  which 
every  w^oman  thinking  of  lav/  as  a  profession  should  read 
and  ponder.  Women  lawyers  are  of  course  especially  needed 
in  matters  concerning  the  protection  and  welfare  of  women 
and  of  children ;  they  are  needed  in  legal  aid  societies  until 
a  more  enlightened  administration  of  law  renders  such  socie- 
ties unnecessary;  they  seem  admirably  fitted  to  fill  the  post 
of  "public  defender"  now  so  widely  advocated.  They  are 
also  greatly  needed  as  judges  in  juvenile  courts,  municipal 
courts,  courts  of  domestic  relations,  small  claims  courts,  and 
so  on.  They  should  have  a  place  on  industrial  accident 
boards  and  boards  of  arbitration  and  conciliation.  Many 
women  lawyers  to-day  are  using  their  training  indirectly  in 
different  social  services,  as  probation  officers,  parole  officers, 
child-placing  agents,  industrial  investigators,  executives  of 
social  organizations.  Law  is  behind  medicine  in  developing 
the  conceptions  of  prevention  and  research ;  but  there  are 
likely  to  be  increasing  opportunities  for  women  of  high  legal 
scholarship  and  technical  equipment  in  the  research  field. 
Dean  Roscoe  Pound  has  advocated  the  establishment  of  a 
Research  Bureau  of  Justice.  The  American  Association  for 
International  Conciliation,  the  Carnegie  Endowment  for  In- 
ternational Peace,  the  American  Association  for  Labor  Leg- 
islation, and  other  associations  carry  on  legal  investigations. 
With  the  establishment  of  the  League  of  Nations  the  study 
of  national  and  international  law  will  undoubtedly  widen  in 
scope.  Just  at  present  there  is  almost  an  obligation  upon 
women  lawyers  of  sound  liberal  education,  thorough  profes- 
sional training,  strong  character,  and  indisputable  standing 
in  the  community  to  become  candidates  for  judicial  and  other 
public  offices.  New  York  has  a  woman  assistant  district 
attorney  and  a  woman  city  magistrate  appointed  by  the 
mayor  and  presiding  over  the  women's  court  and  the  court 
of  domestic  relations.  A  woman  is  judge  of  the  juvenile 
court  in  Washington,  D.  C.  Another  has  been  elected  judge 
in  the  court  of  common  pleas  in  Ohio.  A  woman  has  been 
federal  probate  attorney  for  Indians  in  Oklahoma.    A  Cal- 

*  Reginald  H.  Smith.    Carnegie  Foundation  Bulletin  Number  Thir- 
teen (1919). 


MEDICINE,  LAW,  THE  MINISTRY  75 

ifornia  woman,  a  university  graduate,  has  just  been  ap- 
pointed an  assistant  attorney-general  of  the  United  States, 
the  first  woman  to  hold  such  a  position. 

The  subdivisions  of  the  law  are  many  and  technical.^  The 
main  distinctions  are  those  between  office  practice  and  court 
practice^  civil  and  criminal  law,  and  independent  and  sal- 
aried practitioners.  There  are  some  very  successful  women 
lawyers  in  independent  practice;  but  the  majority  are  in 
salaried  positions  with  law  firms  or  in  the  legal  departments 
of  insurance  companies,  railroads,  title  and  trust  or  real 
estate  companies,  commercial  or  industrial  firms,  social  or- 
ganizations, or  the  government  services.  Few  women  law- 
yers have  engaged  in  extensive  court  practice,  but  there  is 
no  reason  why  they  should  not  do  so,  if  properly  qualified. 

Women  who  wish  to  enter  the  law  should  consider  it  im- 
perative to  secure  preparation  in  a  law  school  of  high  stand- 
ing, in  which  the  training  includes  study  by  the  case-method,^ 
practice  in  moot-courts,  and  emphasis  upon  modern  legal 
and  social  problems  as  well  as  upon  technical  legal  pro- 
cedure. This  training  should  be  based  upon  a  comprehen- 
sive liberal  education  including  some  Latin,  and  courses 
in  economics  and  sociology,  history,  politics  and  govern- 
ment, philosophy,  biology,  and  psychology,  with  attention  to 
its  abnormal  aspects.  They  should  have  robust  health,  clear 
and  vigorous  minds,  the  ability  to  weigh  evidence  impar- 
tially, to  handle  detail,  and  to  reach  practical  decisions  with- 
out losing  idealism ;  above  all,  an  inexhaustible  interest  in 
the  workings  of  the  body  politic  and  the  workings  of  the 
popular  mind.  In  a  profession  that  is  still  practically  a 
pioneer  field  for  women,  employment  depends  largely  upon 
individual  initiative.  But  the  law  school  attended,  lawyers' 
associations,  advertisement  in  law  journals,  registration  with 
bureaus  of  occupations,  may  all  be  of  assistance. 

The  eighteen  lawyers  filling  our  schedules  in  1918-1919 
represent  all  parts  of  the  country  from  New  England  to  the 
Pacific  coast.    Nine  are  in  independent  practice ;  eight  are  in 

*  F.  J.  Allen.     The  Laiv  as  a  Vocation.    Second  Edition  (1919). 

'See  IV omen  in  the  Law  (1921).  Dr.  Josef  Redlich.  Tlie  Coni- 
fnon  Law  and  the  Case  Method.  Carnegie  Foundation  Bulletin 
Number  Eight  (1914). 


^(i         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

salaried  positions;  one  is  dean  of  her  own  law  school.  Of 
the  independent  group,  one  is  in  partnership  with  her  father, 
another  with  her  husband ;  one  is  also  editor  of  a  law  jour- 
nal ;  one  has  in  addition  a  yearly  retaining  fee  from  a  cor- 
poration. The  only  lawyer  giving  her  earnings  reports  an 
.income  of  $5,000  during  the  past  year.  In  the  salaried  group, 
the  incomes  are  not  high,  ranging  from  $66c  for  an  attorney 
for  a  legal  aid  society  to  $2,150  for  an  elected  justice  of  the 
peace.  The  median  is  between  $1,800  and  $2,000.  One 
woman  reports  salaries  of  which  she  knows  as  $2,500  for  a 
woman  lawyer  in  government  service,  $3,000  for  a  woman 
in  the  legal  department  of  a  business  organization,  and 
$3,600  for  a  woman  judge.  Of  the  salaried  lawyers,  five 
are  in  direct  legal  work  and  three  are  using  their  training 
indirectly.  These  include  a  woman  in  charge  of  a  depart- 
ment of  law  and  thrift  in  a  women's  educational  and  philan- 
thropic organization  in  the  east,  a  woman  in  the  legal  de- 
partment of  a  railroad,  a  law  clerk  in  the  legal  department 
of  a  large  western  city,  an  attorney  for  a  middle-western 
legal  aid  society,  a  Pacific  Coast  justice  of  the  peace,  an 
assistant  to  the  secretary  of  the  Federal  Land  Bank  in  a 
southern  district,  an  executive  secretary  of  a  city  suffrage 
organization,  an  organizing  secretary  for  the  National  Board 
of  Young  Women's  Christian  Association.  Six  of  the 
women  lawyers  reporting  are  college  graduates  and  gradu- 
ates of  university  law  schools,  one  of  them  from  a  four- 
year  course  open  only  to  those  with  a  college  degree.  One 
has  the  degree  of  doctor  of  jurisprudence.  Four  others 
are  graduates  of  two-year  law  schools  attached  to  univer- 
sities, but  are  without  college  degrees.  One  is  a  graduate 
of  an  independent  law  school.  The  others  give  no  infor- 
mation. 

Some  comments  follow.  A  young  college  woman  says: 
"In  the  legal  profession,  men  and  women  alike  are  met  at 
the  outset  with  the  same  problem  of  salaries  insufficient  for 
living  expenses.  .  .  .  After  a  year  or  two  of  experience  it 
is  possible  for  men  to  get  $20  a  week,  or  possibly  more. 
Women  meet  with  discrimination  here,  the  larger  firms  being 
almost  unanimously  opposed  to  employing  them ;  and  it  is 
with  these  larger  firms  that  the  large  salaries  are  to  be  ob- 


MEDICINE,  LAW,  THE  MINISTRY  -jy 

tained.  There  is  one  thing  to  be  said,  however,  a  firm  which 
has  once  had  a  woman  in  its  employ  is  ever  thereafter  open 
to  women.  .  .  .  The  obtaining  of  the  vote  in  New  York 
state  has  made  the  greatest  difference.  Hitherto  the  Dis- 
trict Attorney's  Office,  the  best  school  for  criminal  practice 
— and  incidentally  one  which  offers  a  living  wage — has  been 
closed  to  women.  One  of  the  first  acts  of  the  present  admin- 
istration was  to  appoint  a  woman  assistant  district  attorney. 
There  is  undoubtedly  a  similar  reaction  going  on  in  the  pri- 
vate offices,  as  they  cannot  fail  to  be  affected  by  the  change 
in  the  political  status  of  women." 

A  member  of  a  successful  firm  of  women  lawyers  in  a 
metropolitan  eastern  city  says :  "Get  a  business  training. 
Law  is  not  all  library  work  and  appealing  to  juries.  Then 
be  willing  to  do  any  kind  of  drudge  work  at  first.  Familiar- 
ity with  downtown  office  conditions  is  absolutely  essential 
and  takes  time  to  acquire.  Get  all  'Portia'  notions  out  of 
your  head.  .  .  .  The  way  to  secure  positions  is  simply  to 
apply.  A  great  many  law  offices  will  take  inexperienced 
girls  at  a  nominal  salary,  but  the  girl  must  have  outside 
financial  help  or  some  additional  employment  like  tutoring 
or  secretarial  work.  She  can  sometimes  get  part-time  law 
work." 

The  only  woman  lawyer  in  an  eastern  rural  state  says : 
"I  served  on  both  of  our  county  draft  boards,  and  was  an 
associate  member  of  the  legal  advisory  board.  ...  I  have 
already  advised  two  women  to  take  up  the  legal  profession. 
.  .  .  Acquire  all  the  education  you  can ;  if  not  able  to  gradu- 
ate spend  at  least  one  or  two  years  in  a  law  school,  combin- 
ing it  with  work  in  an  office." 

A  western  lawyer  says:  "A  woman  should  have  some 
business  experience  before  entering  the  legal  profession." 

A  college  graduate  with  a  J.  D.  degree  from  one  of  the 
best  university  law  schools  in  the  country  and  experience  in 
Legal  Aid  Society  work  makes  the  following  illuminating 
comments:  "I  advise  women  to  get  as  good  as,  if  not  a 
better  legal  training  than  men  get,  and  to  devote  themselves 
exclusively  to  law,  if  possible,  during  the  years  of  study. 
Only  in  this  way  can  they  become  'professional'  and  able 
to  face  well-trained  men.     The  west  offers  better  oppor- 


78         V/OMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

tunities  in  law  than  the  east.  I  strongly  advise  legal  train- 
ing for  ambitious  women  who  are  attracted  to  social  work 
or  executive  work,  as  well  as  for  those  who  definitely  want 
to  practice.  Practice  is  still  hard  to  get,  though  not  impos- 
sible. But  the  training  is  invaluable,  and  should  open  many 
fields  to  women.  Personally,  I  am  much  interested  in  pro- 
posed legislative  reform  and  its  effects  when  undertaken; 
and  I  hope  to  do  some  work  in  this  line.  In  my  professional 
training  the  thing  most  helpful  for  my  working  experience 
has  been  inventiveness  in  meeting  practical  situations  and 
devising  some  way  out  and  boldness  in  undertaking  it.  I 
consider  my  experience  as  attorney  for  a  legal  aid  society 
the  best  possible  training  for  the  general  practice  of  law. 
It  was  further  valuable  because  it  gave  me  an  acquaintance 
with  all  the  social  service  agencies  and  their  methods." 


It  is  almost  impossible  at  the  present  time  to  make  a  fair 
and  adequate  statement  with  respect  to  the  situation  and 
opportunities  of  women  ministers  and  religious  workers. 
Apart  from  ordained  ministers  only  women  with  a  corre- 
sponding training  may  properly  be  considered  in  a  chapter 
on  women  in  the  learned  professions.  Many  other  workers 
under  religious  auspices,  such  as  workers  in  the  different 
departments  of  the  Young  Women's  Christian  Associations, 
parish  visitors,  workers  in  religious  education,  journalism, 
and  publicity,  secretaries  of  religious  organizations,  belong 
rather  with  the  professions  in  which  lie  their  training  and 
experience.  With  the  growing  socialization  of  religious  ac- 
tivities, women  in  almost  every  professional  field  may  be 
found  working  under  the  direction  of  religious  organiza- 
tions. In  the  past,  requirements  and  salaries  for  men  as 
well  as  women  ministers  and  religious  workers  have  often 
been  pitifully  below  true  professional  standards.  But  there 
is  a  growing  recognition  on  the  part  of  religious  bodies  and 
the  great  religious  associations  that  professional  prepara- 
tion and  working  conditions  for  both  men  and  women  must 
approximate  those  found  in  the  other  professions,  if 
organized  religion  is  to  meet  its  spiritual  and  social  respon- 
sibilities in  the  world  of  to-day.     There  is  also  a  growing 


MEDICINE,  LAW,  THE  MINISTRY  79 

recognition  that  women  should  have  a  more  active  share  in 
church  government  and  administration. 

The  main  types  of  religious  work  for  both  women  min- 
isters and  non-ordained  professional  women  are  (i)  parish 
work;  (2)  foreign  and  home  missionary  work  ;  (3)  adminis- 
trative and  educational  work,  in  connection  with  religious 
organizations.^  It  is  difficult  to  determine  the  position  of 
women  ministers  to-day.^  The  1910  census  reported  685. 
The  Bureau  of  Education  reported  for  1916-1917  760 
women  students  and  67  graduates  in  a  total  of  169  theo- 
logical schools.  But  inquiry  of  several  standard  schools  of 
theology  reveals  the  fact  that  few  of  these  women  are  pre- 
paring for  active  service  in  the  ministry,  probably  fewer 
than  were  so  preparing  twenty  or  thirty  years  ago.  The 
Hartford  Theological  Seminary  has  had  over  fifty  women 
graduates,  and  has  many  women  students  in  its  School  of 
Religious  Pedagogy  and  Kennedy  School  of  Missions,  all 
three  incorporated  as  the  Hartford  Seminary  Foundation.  It 
is  impossible  to  say  how  many  have  been  ordained  as  minis- 
ters.''' Most  women  students  of  divinity  appear  to  be  fitting 
themselves  for  service  as  lay  parish  assistants,  or  as  teachers, 
educational  directors,  secretaries,  or  missionaries.  The  Mead- 
ville  Theological  School  of  the  Unitarian  denomination  es- 
tablished several  years  ago  a  special  course  for  parish  assist- 
ants and  lay  workers.  The  Tuckerman  School  in  Boston  is 
a  similar  Unitarian  school  for  the  training  of  lay  workers. 
Union  Theological  Seminary  has  a  cooperative  arrangement 
with  Teachers  College  of  Columbia  University,  and  a  num- 
ber of  women  students  in  Teachers  College  are  taking  spe- 
cial courses  in  religious  education.  The  Divinity  School  of 
the  University  of  Chicago,  which  has  a  number  of  women 
enrolled,  reports  that  few  are  graduated.  The  National 
Training  System  of  the  Young  Women's  Christian  Associa- 
tions is  not  closely  comparable  to  the  training  given  in  the 
schools  of  divinity.     But  its  two-year  courses  for  secre- 

'  See  Oberlin  Bulletin,  Vocational  Advice  for  College  Students 
under  Ministry,  Foreign  Missionary  Work,  Religious  Work;  Leland 
Stanford  Junior  University  Bulletin,  Vocational  Information  un- 
der Ministry. 

'  See  Women  Preachers.    Woman  Citisen.    December  18,  1920. 


8o         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

taries  and  its  many  short  summer  and  field  courses  are 
strongly  religious  as  well  as  sociological  and  educational  in 
character ;  and  many  religious  workers  and  missionaries  are 
drafted  from  the  ranks  of  Christian  Association  secre- 
taries. But  it  may  be  said  that  Association  work  is  a  pro- 
fession or  a  group  of  professions  in  itself.^ 

In  general,  apart  from  Christian  Association  work,  the 
two  religious  fields  which  attract  women  in  considerable 
numbers,  and  which  are  making  steadily  increasing  demands 
for  women  of  full  professional  training,  are  the  missionary 
field  and  the  field  of  religious  education  and  administration. 
The  modern  missionary  must  be  an  educator,  a  social 
worker,  a  health  worker,  and  a  student  of  racial  psychology 
and  racial  customs.  It  is  often  of  the  highest  importance, 
in  the  eastern  countries  especially,  that  she  have  medical 
training.  In  the  field  of  religious  education  and  administra- 
tion, all  the  more  important  denominations  have  special 
departments  in  charge  of  experts  who  are  seeking  to  or- 
ganize and  improve  the  quality  of  religious  instruction  in 
their  colleges,  schools,  Sunday  schools,  and  classes  for 
young  people  and  adults.  The  Religious  Education  Associa- 
tion has  been  an  active  coordinating  agency.  Many  of  the 
denominations  have  also  social-service  departments.  The 
Federal  Council  of  the  Churches  of  Christ  in  America  has 
led  in  interdenominational  activities ;  and  the  Interchurch 
World  Movement  employed  men  and  women  professional 
workers  of  many  kinds.  In  short,  the  religious  cooperations 
fostered  by  the  war,  the  heightened  interest  of  religious 
bodies  in  social  and  industrial  problems,  the  great  campaigns 
for  funds,  such  as  that  recently  completed  by  the  Metho- 
dists, all  promise  a  period  of  greatly  enlarged  religious 
enterprise  and  religious  publicity.  One  of  the  most  forward- 
looking  programs  for  reconstruction  is  that  issued  by  the 
Catholic  War  Council.  All  these  movements  need  men  and 
women  with  professional  training,  power  of  leadership,  and 
genuine  religious  spirit.  A  result  may  be  that  women 
will  find  a  new  appeal  in  the  active  work  of  the  ministry, 
and  that  we  shall  have  more  women  in  charge  of  parishes. 

'  See  Oberlin   Bulletin,   Vocationcl  Advice  for  College  Students 
under  Y.  W.  C.  A. 


MEDICINE,  LAW,  THE  MINISTRY  8i 

There  seems  a  special  need  for  such  women  in  country 
communities,  where  they  might  develop  a  vigorous  church 
and  social  life  in  cooperation  with  the  schools,  the  library, 
the  grange,  the  county  farm-bureau,  the  rural  nurse,  far 
better  than  the  discouraged  elderly  parsons  or  callow  youths 
from  the  seminary  generally  sent  to  such  places.  It 
would  be  well  worth  the  while  of  the  churches  to  try  the 
experiment  of  sending  a  number  of  picked  women  ministers 
into  rural  parishes  and  to  pay  part  of  their  salaries.  At 
present,  there  are  a  few  women  ministers  or  assistant  min- 
isters in  parishes  and  a  larger  number  of  pastor's  assistants 
and  parish  visitors.  The  duties  of  these  women  are  varied, 
including  educational  and  social  work,  direction  of  clubs  and 
organizations,  making  of  parish  calls,  and  frequently  con- 
siderable secretarial,  clerical,  and  bookkeeping  work. 

We  have  returns  from  only  five  women  in  the  field  of 
religious  work.  They  include  a  woman  minister  of  success- 
ful experience  in  several  parishes,  now  associate  secretary  of 
the  department  of  religious  education  of  the  national  board 
of  her  denomination ;  an  assistant  to  the  secretary  of  the 
board  of  pastoral  supply  of  another  denomination ;  a  parish 
assistant  in  a  large  eastern  city ;  an  office  secretary  of  a  city 
union  church;  a  pastor's  helper  in  another  city  church.  Only 
three  report  salaries,  ranging  from  $720  to  $2,100.  Three 
are  college  graduates;  one  has  had  special  courses  at  Ox- 
ford ;  another  has  had  a  year  of  college  work.  One  parish 
worker  has  taken  a  full  theological  course  and  has  a  degree 
in  divinity.  The  minister  says :  "As  a  minister  I  participated 
in  such  community  activities  as  women's  clubs,  playground 
associations,  suffrage  organizations,  state  board  of  civic 
leagues,  and  was  a  member  of  a  goodly  number  of  minis- 
terial organizations  of  various  kinds,  and  have  done  active 
work  with  religious  education  associations  of  all  denomina- 
tions, on  committees  and  in  conventions."  Her  advice  to 
women  entering  the  ministry  or  the  work  of  religious  educa- 
tion is:  "Get  thorough  training.  In  this  case  it  means 
the  training  of  a  professional  school  or,  as  a  possible  sub- 
stitute, after  a  college  course,  training  in  literary  work  and 
in  special  schools  of  religious  education  or  special  college 
courses  in  that  subject."     With  regard  to  the  salaries  of 


82         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

men  and  women  ministers,  she  observes :  "Differences  come 
from  the  fact  that  congregations  are  not  yet  used  to  women 
ministers,  and  before  this  year  (1918)  had  little  difficulty 
in  securing  a  man  for  the  pulpit  if  they  wanted  one.  In 
every  parish  I  have  had  since  the  first  the  congregation 
has  paid  me  all  It  could  have  afforded  to  pay  a  man  in  my 
place ;  in  my  last  parish  they  secured  my  services  by  paying 
me  $200  more  than  they  had  paid  the  man  who  preceded 
me.  War  conditions  are  likely  to  open  more  opportunities 
for  women  ministers.  They  will  need  just  as  extensive  and 
intensive  training  as  men  receive  for  the  highest  success. 
Men's  failures  are  laid  to  their  individual  traits ;  women's, 
to  the  fact  that  they  are  women." 

A  parish  assistant  says  :  "I  superintend  the  church  school ; 
keep  the  parish  list,  etc. ;  arrange  and  assist  in  meetings  and 
entertainments  ;  make  calls  ;  indeed,  do  a  little  of  everything. 
My  work  includes  teaching,  organizing,  social  and  secretarial 
work;  but  teaching  is  rather  more  important  than  the 
others." 


CHAPTER  V 

HEALTH   SERVICES   OTHER  THAN    MEDICINE 

The  last  chapter  emphasized  the  growth  of  preventive 
and  group  medicine  and  the  impetus  given  by  the  war  to 
the  movement  for  public  heahh  in  the  larger  sense.  We 
are  undoubtedly  entering  upon  a  still  more  active  period 
in  the  control  of  disease  and  the  encouragement  of  positive 
health  conditions,  ideas,  and  practices.  The  key-notes  of 
modern  health  work  are  education  and  cooperation.  It 
therefore  makes  use  of  every  means  of  reaching  people: 
federal,  state,  and  city  governments;  schools,  libraries,  play- 
grounds, newspapers,  magazines,  motion-pictures;  shops, 
factories,  labor  unions  ;  organizations  such  as  the  Red  Cross, 
women's  clubs,  chambers  of  commerce  and  civic  leagues, 
Christian  Associations,  Knights  of  Columbus,  Boy  and  Girl 
Scouts;  health  associations  such  as  the  National  Tuber- 
culosis Association,  the  American  Social  Hygiene  Asso- 
ciation, the  National  Committee  for  Mental  Hygiene ;  com- 
mercial health  enterprises  such  as  the  Life  Extension  In- 
stitute and  the  Metropolitan  Life  Insurance  Company.  _  It 
invites  the  cooperation  of  such  agencies  in  the  formulation 
and  application  of  a  comprehensive  health  program  which 
is  at  the  same  time  a  comprehensive  social  program;  en- 
lists health  and  social  workers  of  many  types;  and  evolves 
new  types  to  meet  new  needs.  In  the  development  of  the 
movement,  the  doctor,  the  sanitary  engineer,  the  nurse,  and 
the  social  worker  have  led  the  way,  with  the  last  two  closest 
to  the  firing  line.  More  recent  are  the  medical  social  worker, 
the  psychiatric  social  worker,  the  occupation  therapist,  the 
physiotherapist,  the  industrial  hygienist,  the  physical  edu- 
cator, the  nutrition  worker,  the  playground  and  recreation 
worker,  the  health  publicity  worker.  Fundamental  to  them 
all  is  the  laboratory  research  worker.    Even  to-day  we  can 

83 


84         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

hardly  realize  the  extent  to  which  health  ideas  are  shaping 
contemporary  education,  social  and  civic  work,  and  proposed 
legislation.  While  the  functions  and  professional  status  of 
the  newer  types  of  health  worker  are  matters  of  conspicuous 
discussion  and  experimentation,  there  is  going  on  a  quiet  re- 
formulation of  the  older  conceptions  of  both  doctor  and 
nurse,  and  an  active  effort  to  utilize  every  type  of  worker 
in  a  statesmanlike  attack  upon  the  many  problems  of  social 
and  individual  health. 

This  cooperation  gives  promise  of  coming  about  most 
practically  and  effectively  through  the  development  of  local 
health  centers.  Many  have  already  been  organized  experi- 
mentally throughout  the  country  under  state,  city,  or  non- 
governmental auspices.  Ohio  has  a  new  health  center  law. 
New  York  and  other  states  are  proposing  to  establish  them. 
The  American  Red  Cross  has  a  program  for  health  cen- 
ters. The  federal  Children's  Bureau  ^  through  its  Children's 
Year  campaign  and  through  its  continuous  activities  for 
child  welfare  has  led  in  the  spreading  of  the  idea.  Its 
urban  and  rural  health  studies  have  called  attention  to  the 
child  of  "pre-school"  age.  The  "social  unit"  experiment 
in  Cincinnati  has  done  its  most  intensive  work  in  community 
and  child  health.  The  model  department  of  charities  and 
corrections  of  Westchester  County,  New  York,  lays  a  like 
emphasis.  The  Framingham  tuberculosis  demonstration 
points  out  the  value  of  local  coordination  of  health  activities. 

Fully  organized  health  centers  would  be  stations  for  health 
teaching,  information,  and  advice,  health  services  of  all 
kinds.  They  would  be  more  than  clinics  and  dispensaries,^ 
though  they  would  include  them,  for  their  work  would  be 
preventive  even  more  than  curative,  and  would  serve  all 
social  and  economic  groups.  They  would  provide  pre-natal 
and  infant-care  service;  child-hygiene  service;  service  for 
special  diseases,  such  as  tuberculosis,  diabetes,  cardiac  de- 
fects, venereal  diseases ;  industrial  hygiene  servace ;  nutrition 
and  mental  hygiene  services  all  along  the  line.    They  would 

^  See  Children's  Bureau    Publications    (1912  to  date), 

^  For  a  constructive  conception  of  these  agencies,  see  Michael  M. 

Davis  and  Andrew  R.  Warner,     Dispensaries:   Their  Managevieiit 

and  Development   (1918). 


OTHER  HEALTH  SERVICES  85 

map  the  health  needs  and  the  health  opportunities  of  the 
district  served,  and  would  connect  it  with  the  larger  health 
resources  of  the  city,  county,  state,  and  nation,  of  which 
they  would  be  local  units.  They  would  work  in  close  rela- 
tions with  schools,  playground  and  recreation  agencies, 
housing  and  food-distributing  agencies,  commercial  and  in- 
dustrial establishments.  They  would  focus  and  coordinate 
the  efforts  of  doctors,  nurses,  nutrition  workers,  child-wel- 
fare workers,  medical  and  psychiatric  social  workers,  teach- 
ers, physical  and  recreation  directors,  housing  and  food  in- 
spectors, industrial  health  workers.  Such  health  centers 
would  become  clearing-houses  for  many  community  efforts 
that  are  now  carried  on  independently  and  frequently  over- 
lap. Health  matters  are  concrete  and  understandable,  and 
when  the  emphasis  is  upon  prevention  and  education,  they 
become  a  rallying-point  for  community  activity,  and  harness 
to  themselves  many  other  interests.  It  is  moreover,  essential 
to  keep  in  mind  as  the  health  center  movement  develops, 
that  it  must  be  carried  on  with  active  community  coopera- 
tion, management,  and  support,  and  not  as  a  philanthropic 
enterprise. 

Until  such  health  centers  are  generally  established,  there 
are  many  agencies  and  many  workers  engaged  in  the  further- 
ing of  health  policies  and  health  undertakings.  There  are 
likewise  a  growing  number  of  institutions  other  than  medical 
schools  which  oft'er  training  of  a  professional  character  for 
health  workers.  The  Massachusetts  Institute  of  Technology 
organized  the  pioneer  course  in  public  health  and  sanitary 
engineering,  and  has  conducted  a  cooperative  course  with 
Harvard  University,  leading  to  the  degrees  of  master  and 
doctor  of  public  health.  A  number  of  state  universities 
have  similar  courses.  Yale  University  has  within  a  few 
years  developed  a  strong  graduate  department  of  public 
health  in  connection  with  its  medical  school.  In  1918  Johns 
Hopkins  University  opened  its  School  of  Hygiene  and  Pub- 
lic Health  with  a  minimum  admission  requirement  of  two 
years  of  college  work.  The  Woman's  Medical  College  of 
Pennsylvania  inaugurated  in  1919  a  course  in  public  health. 
Teachers  College  of  Columbia  University  maintains  a  De- 
partment of  Nursing  and  Health  open  to  graduate  nurses 


86         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

with  full  high  school  education.  Simmons  College  has  sim- 
ilar courses.  The  Nursing  Service  of  the  American  Red 
Cross  is  offering  fellowships  in  public  health.  The  vari- 
ous schools  of  social  work  are  giving  courses  in  health 
problems,  in  medical  social  service,  and  in  psychiatric  social 
service.  The  Rockefeller  Foundation  actively  furthers 
health  research  and  health  education  along  various  lines. 
State  and  city  boards  of  health  and  bureaus  of  child  hygiene, 
hospitals,  clinics,  dispensaries,  educational  and  other  institu- 
tions, organizations,  and  industries  are  all  calling  for  health 
workers.  The  United  States  Public  Health  Service  is  carry- 
ing on  some  of  the  health  movements  inaugurated  as  war 
measures,  and  is  planning  further  activities  in  connection 
with  state  health  authorities,  if  Congress  provide  the  funds. 
The  problems  of  an  adequate  rural  health  service  press  for 
attention  and  action.  The  Red  Cross  has  a  program  for 
rural  health  work.  Health  surveys  are  being  made  under 
various  auspices.  Investigators,  organizers,  teachers,  pub- 
licity workers,  are  needed  in  these  various  projects.  There 
are  multiplying  opportunities  for  training  in  all  these  types 
of  work. 

Of  health  workers  other  than  doctors,  the  hundred  thou- 
sand odd  graduate,  or  registered,  nurses  are  by  far  the 
largest,  best-known,  and  oldest  group.  Nursing,  like  medi- 
cine, is  in  process  of  reorganization.  But  for  the  present,  it 
is  in  the  main  a  potential  rather  than  an  actual  profession,  to 
be  compared  with  "teaching  more  truly  than  with  law  or 
medicine.  Its  signal  services  in  the  war  and  the  widespread 
interest  then  aroused  in  nursing  education  have  focused 
attention  both  upon  its  limitations  and  its  possibilities.  It 
already  possesses  some  unmistakable  marks  of  a  profession 
as  this  book  uses  the  term — a  definite  type  of  training  for  a 
practical  end ;  strong  group  spirit  and  organization ;  state 
examination  and  registration.  It  even  looks  forward  to  a 
mandatory  license  system  for  all  practitioners,  as  in  medi- 
cine. But  conditions  persist  which  seriously  compromise  its 
assured  position  as  a  profession.  Chief  among  these  are: 
(i)  the  wide  variations  in  the  quality  and  standing  of 
hospital  training  schools  for  nurses;  (2)  the  low  standards 
of  preliminary  education  required  for  admission  to  hospital 


OTHER  HEALTH  SERVICES  87 

training  schools;  (3)  the  fact  that  hospitals  profit  financially 
from  the  services  of  student  nurses  in  their  training  schools ; 
(4)  the  traditional  conception  of  the  nurse  as  a  routine 
worker  with  the  individual  patient  and  not  with  the  family 
or  the  community,  and  thus  concerned  with  cure  rather  than 
with  prevention. 

The  leaders  in  the  nursing  world  clearly  recognize  these 
defects  and  have  taken  active  steps  to  remedy  them.  The 
study  of  nursing  education  now  in  progress  under  the 
auspices  of  the  Rockefeller  Foundation  is  bound  to  be  fruit- 
ful of  professional  results  in  many  ways.  Even  before  the 
war  a  committee  of  the  National  League  of  Nursing  Educa- 
tion issued  a  Standard  Curriculum  for  Schools  of  Nursing 
which  embodies  the  best  existing  practice  and  points  toward 
further  professional  development,  while  frankly  recognizing 
present  lacks  and  difficulties.  It  urges  graduation  from  an 
accredited  high  school  as  an  admission  requirement  "which 
is  insisted  upon  for  every  other  type  of  professional  train- 
ing" ;  and  advocates  the  affiliation  of  schools  of  nursing 
with  adjacent  colleges  and  universities,  the  granting  of  nine 
months'  credit  to  students  who  have  taken  certain  college 
courses  in  science,  and,  when  possible,  the  joint  college  and 
nursing  course.  During  the  war  the  Army  School  of  Nurs- 
ing required  high  school  graduation  for  admission.  A  num- 
ber of  the  leading  hospitals  also  make  this  requirement ;  and 
training  schools  which  are  an  integral  part  of  universities 
hold  to  the  regular  standards  of  college  entrance.  New 
York  is  raising  its  educational  requirements  for  nurses,  so 
that  by  1924  only  high-school  graduates  will  be  admitted  to 
hospital  training  schools  in  that  state.  But  there  is  still 
a  highly  unprofessional  variation  in  the  standards  of  train- 
ing schools.  Some  provide  only  a  two  years'  course,  and 
admit  students  with  only  one  year  of  high  school  or  even 
with  only  a  grammar  school  education.  There  is  an  in- 
creasing demand  for  a  systematic  study  and  rating  of  schools 
of  nursing  and  the  publication  of  a  list  of  standard  schools, 
as  in  the  case  of  medicine.  Until  this  is  done,  women 
thinking  of  nursing  as  a  profession  should  look  carefully 
into  the  matter  of  preparation,  and  select  a  school  of  un- 
impeachable standing,  affiliated  if  possible  with  an  educa- 


88         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

tional  institution.  Training  schools  are  already  ranked  as  A 
and  B  by  the  United  States  Bureau  of  Education. 

Even  a  high-school  education,  however,  is  not  sufficient 
pre-professional  training  for  the  leaders  in  nursing,  if  it  is 
to  keep  pace  with  other  professions.  An  increasing  number 
of  universities,  following  the  lead  of  the  universities  of 
Minnesota  and  Cincinnati,  Western  Reserve  University,  the 
State  University  of  Iowa,  and  the  University  of  California, 
are  offering  a  five-year  course  leading  to  the  bachelor's 
degree  and  the  diploma  in  nursing,  and  are  providing  grad- 
uate courses  in  public  health  nursing,  nursing  administration, 
and  nursing  education.  Teachers  College  of  Columbia  Uni- 
versity is  adopting  this  plan.  The  University  of  Michigan 
has  recently  established  a  professorship  of  public  healtii 
nursing.  War-emergency  efforts  to  increase  the  supply  of 
nurses  with  good  educational  background,  such  as  the  Vas- 
sar  Summer  Training  Camp  for  Nurses,  which  gave  pre- 
liminary training  to  nearly  five  hundred  college  graduates 
entering  hospitals  for  a  two  years'  course,  have  had  a  lasting 
effect  in  interesting  a  larger  number  of  college  women  in 
nursing.  Even  more  important,  they  have  introduced  the 
colleges  and  the  training  schools  to  one  another. 

The  aspect  of  the  present  training  school  system  most 
seriously  demanding  investigation  is  the  amount  of  routine 
hospital  service  required  of  the  student  nurse  and  prolonged 
for  the  benefit  of  the  hospital  after  its  educational  value 
has  been  exhausted.  In  no  profession  are  actual  practice 
and  the  acquirement  of  certain  techniques  more  important 
than  in  nursing.  But  theory  and  practice  must  be  educa- 
tionally related  as  in  other  types  of  professional  training. 
The  financial  basis  of  nursing  education  is  at  present  thor- 
oughly unsound  and  unprofessional,  with  the  danger  of 
exploitation  of  the  student  constantly  lurking  within  it. 
Only  with  endowed  or  publicly  supported  schools  of  nursing 
or  the  working  out  of  some  other  satisfactory  arrangement, 
will  the  three  years  given  to  the  training  of  the  nurse  become 
actually  as  well  as  nominally  educational.  When  the  time 
spent  with  patients  and  on  wards  is  reorganized  on  a  basis 
of  supervised  laboratory  and  practice  work,  there  will  be 
an  opportunity  to  enrich  the  present  meager  content  of  the 


OTHER  HEALTH  SERVICES  89 

nursing  curriculum  and  to  bring  the  teaching  up  to  modern 
professional  standards. 

Training  school  teaching  can  no  longer  be  done  by  any 
nurse  or  doctor  available.  It  must  be  done  by  properly 
trained  and  adequately  paid  instructors.  It  can  no  longer 
confine  itself  to  what  goes  on  within  the  walls  of  the  hos- 
pital. It  must  show  the  social  and  economic  wastes  of  sick- 
ness and  injury,  the  social  and  personal  significance  of 
health.  It  must  make  use  of  problem  and  project  and  dis- 
cussion and  laboratory  methods  instead  of  the  old  rote 
cramming  of  text-books  and  the  old  drill  learning  of  tech- 
niques. It  must  provide  for  observation  field  trips.  It 
must  include  something  that  has  yet  to  be  worked  out,  a 
simple  and  practical  course  in  psychology  and  mental 
hygiene  with  special  attention  to  illness  and  convalescence 
and  the  psychological  grounds  for  positive  health  interests 
and  responses.  A  redistribution  of  the  time  allotted  to 
instruction  and  to  practical  hospital  duties  is  being  forced 
upon  many  hospitals  by  the  legal  requirements  in  certain 
states  of  an  eight-hour  day  for  nurses.  A  few  leading  hos- 
pitals are  trying  the  experiment  of  having  their  student 
nurses  live  outside  like  other  students,  meeting  a  regular 
program  of  classroom,  ward,  and  laboratory  engagements. 
It  may  be  that  some  plan  will  be  worked  out  for  certain  years 
or  certain  terms  of  hospital  residence  or  "nursing  interne- 
ship"  during  the  course  rather  than  the  present  method  of 
residence  for  the  entire  three  years.  But  whatever  the  final 
forms  and  varieties  of  nursing  education,  it  has  at  least 
entered  upon  a  period  of  active  inquiry  and  vigorous  growth 
in  desirable  directions. 

This  has  largely  come  about  through  the  new  position 
and  responsibilities  of  the  nurse  in  the  public  health  move- 
ment. Her  duties  are  no  longer  confined  to  bedside  nursing 
in  the  hospital  or  in  the  private  home  under  the  immediate 
direction  of  the  doctor  in  charge  of  the  individual  case. 
The  public  health  nurse — whether  under  a  visiting  nurse  as- 
sociation, a  board  of  health,  a  board  of  education,  a  com- 
munity center,  an  industrial  corporation ;  whether  tuberculo- 
sis nurse,  infant  welfare  nurse,  pre-school  nurse,  school 
nurse,  industrial  nurse,  mental  hygiene  nurse — is  respon- 


90         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

sible  to  a  group.  She  cooperates  with  various  doctors,  social 
workers,  public  officials,  organizations.  She  must  know  the 
social  and  economic  standards  and  customs  of  the  neighbor- 
hood in  which  she  works  and  the  families  with  which  she 
has  to  do.  She  must  know  how  to  utilize  and  to  develop 
all  the  resources  of  the  community,  those  that  make  for 
health  as  well  as  those  that  bring  assistance  in  time  of 
illness.  In  this  way,  she  becomes  an  expert  field  agent  in 
matters  of  health  rather  than  the  subordinate  of  a  single 
physician.  The  problem  of  the  relations  between  the  social- 
ized nurse  and  the  socialized  physician  still  remain  to  be 
worked  out  by  the  two  groups.  There  are  still  sharply 
divergent  views  and  persistent  traditions  from  the  old  in- 
dividualistic order  of  things  in  both  medicine  and  nursing. 
It  is  undoubtedly  true  that  bedside  care  of  the  sick  is  an 
essential  technique  for  nurses  of  every  type.  In  private 
cases  the  nurse  is  unquestionably  under  the  doctor's  orders ; 
but  the  growing  emphasis  upon  the  importance  of  nursing 
care  renders  her  position  even  there  one  of  great  respon- 
sibility. It  by  no  means  follows  that  her  entire  hospital 
training  should  be  carried  on  as  a  sort  of  military  discip- 
line, with  discouragement  of  initiative  and  encouragement 
of  merely  routine  skill.  In  the  past,  however,  this  has  too 
often  been  the  case ;  and  it  has  done  much  to  disqualify 
the  nurse  as  a  professional  worker.  The  shortage  of  nurses 
during  the  war  reduced  their  private  employment ;  and  it 
may  come  to  pass  that  for  rich  as  well  as  poor  serious 
cases  will  be  given  hospital  treatment  and  minor  cases  will 
be  treated  at  home  through  a  visiting  nurse  service.  It  is 
certainly  true  that  at  present  "private  nursing"  is  not  con- 
ducted on  a  wholly  professional  basis  either  as  regards 
charges  or  mode  of  engagement.  The  most  poorly  equipped 
teacher  or  social  worker  is  employed  and  paid  by  a  re- 
sponsible group. 

Socialized  or  public  health  nursing  is  already  divided  into 
various  fields,  requiring  special  preparation.  How  much  of 
this  should  be  given  in  the  undergraduate  nursing  course, 
how  much  should  be  left  for  special  graduate  study  is  mat- 
ter of  discussion  among  experts  in  nursing  education.  Prob- 
ably, as  in  other  professions,  the  undergraduate  training 


II 


OTHER  HEALTH  SERVICES  91 

should  open  up  the  several  fields  but  should  leave  full  equip- 
ment to  subsequent  specialization. 

Whatever  may  be  said  of  the  professional  standing  of 
private  or  "bedside"  nurses,  three  groups  of  nurses  have 
undoubted  professional  responsibilities,  and  are  coming 
to  possess  preliminary  education  and  special  training  of 
an  unmistakably  professional  character.  These  are  ad- 
ministrative nurses,  teaching  nurses,  and  public  health 
nurses.  Nurses  with  college  education,  experience,  and 
graduate  training  are  in  large  demand  as  superintendents  of 
nurses  in  well  organized  hospitals,  as  directors  and  teachers 
in  training  schools,  as  executive  heads  of  visiting  nurse  asso- 
ciations or  other  health  organizations,  as  investigators  and 
makers  of  surveys.  Nurses  are  sometimes  heads  of  small 
hospitals,  sanatoria,  and  other  institutions.  Public  health 
nursing  is  increasing  by  leaps  and  bounds.  With  the  estab- 
lishment of  neighborhood  health  centers,  various  types  of 
public  health  nurse  will  be  assigned  to  them — mother  and 
infant  welfare  nurses,  tuberculosis  nurses,  possibly  school 
nurses,  psychiatric  nurses,  and  industrial  nurses.^  In  the 
small  town  or  rural  district,  there  may  be  only  a  single  pub- 
lic health  nurse.  Industrial  nurses  employed  by  corpora- 
tions are  among  the  most  recent  of  public  health  develop- 
ments, and  their  position  and  responsibilities  vary  widely, 
and  are  still  unstandardized.-  Perhaps  eventually  they 
will  be  more  properly  attached  to  an  adjacent  health  center. 
Many  large  department  stores,  hotels,  and  other  commercial 
firms  employ  nurses  for  their  workers  and  patrons. 

Women  planning  to  enter  any  one  of  these  three  profes- 
sional nursing  groups  should  have  had  as  full  a  college 
education  as  possible,  with  courses  in  the  laboratory  sciences, 
especially  in  bacteriology  and  the  chemistry  of  nutrition, 
psychology,  and  the  economic  and  social  sciences.  Interest 
in  art  and  literature  are  valuable  assets.  If  they  have  not 
already  secured  college  education,  they  should  select  one  of 
the  five-year  courses  leading  to  a  college  degree  and  a  nurs- 
ing diploma.  A  woman  beginning  her  professional  work  at 
twenty-five  or  even  thirty  thus  equipped  will  go   farther 

^  Mary  S.  Gardner.    Public  Health  Nursing  (1916). 
*See  Florence  S.  Wright.    Industrial  Nursing  (1919). 


92         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

professionally  than  a  woman  v/ith  only  the  ordinary  three- 
year  course  at  a  training  school.  Women  entering  nursing 
need  good  health,  steadiness  and  persistence,  a  liking  for 
people,  cheerful  common  sense,  an  interest  in  both  the  scien- 
tific and  the  practical  sides  of  the  work  and  in  its  social  rela- 
tions. 

There  is  a  steady  demand  for  well-trained  nurses  with 
special  equipment.  The  great  nursing  organizations,  the 
Red  Cross  Bureau  of  Information  for  Nurses  in  New  York, 
the  cooperative  nurses'  registries,  and  the  training  schools 
are  all  means  of  securing  employment.  The  commercial 
nurses'  registries  are  to  be  avoided  by  the  professional  nurse. 

Private  bedside  nursing  at  a  high  weekly  rate  is  said  to 
pay  better  than  salaried  nursing  along  any  of  the  above 
lines.  But  the  work  is  irregular,  exhausting,  and  lacking  in 
many  of  the  professional  satisfactions  and  contacts  of  the 
salaried  type  of  position.  As  educational  and  personal 
standards  rise,  salaries  for  nurses  compare  favorably  with 
those  in  other  professions.  Of  fifteen  salaried  nurses  filling 
our  schedules  for  the  most  part  in  1918,  eleven  received  sal- 
aries ranging  from  $900  to  $3,000  with  a  median  salary  of 
$1,300.  One  group  includes  a  superintendent  of  a  hospital 
and  training  school  in  a  good-sized  eastern  city;  a  superin- 
tendent of  a  visiting  nurse  association  in  a  great  middle- 
western  city,  in  charge  of  a  staff  of  ninety-six  nurses  and 
six  office  workers ;  a  director  of  nurses  in  a  divisional  head- 
quarters of  the  American  Red  Cross ;  a  chief  child  welfare 
supervisor  of  a  New  England  state  department  of  health. 
Salaries  in  this  group  are  from  $1,500  and  traveling 
expenses  to  $3,000.  Another  group  includes  three  district 
supervisors  in  the  state  department  of  health  above  men- 
tioned, each  having  oversight  of  some  thirty  or  forty  cities 
and  towns  and  carrying  on  educational  and  investigational 
child  hygiene  work;  a  district  supervisor  of  an  eastern 
visiting  nurse  association,  in  charge  of  seven  nurses;  a 
supervising  nurse  under  the  civic  improvement  league  of  a 
large  southern  city ;  a  visiting  nurse  for  a  middle-western 
tuberculosis  society.  Salaries  here  range  from  $900  to 
$1,400  with  a  median  salary  of  $1,200.  The  industrial 
group  includes  five  nurses,  employed  by  a  Northern  Michi- 


OTHER  HEALTH  SERVICES  93 

gan  mining  company  and  firms  manufacturing  confection- 
ery, shoes,  rubber  tires,  and  automobiles.  Salaries  range 
from  $900  to  $1,320  with  a  median  salary  of  $1,120.  In 
addition,  seven  large  manufacturing  companies  report  that 
they  employ  from  one  to  fourteen  nurses. 

Of  the  fifteen  nurses  one  is  a  college  graduate  with  train- 
ing in  a  good  hospital  and  a  year's  course  at  a  school  of 
social  work ;  one  is  a  normal  school  graduate ;  three  are  high- 
school  graduates ;  two  were  educated  in  private  schools ; 
three  have  only  an  elementary  school  education.  Four  have 
had  graduate  courses  in  public  health ;  one  has  taken  college 
work  in  domestic  science ;  two  have  had  summer  courses  for 
nurses  at  a  school  of  social  work.  Several  have  been  school 
teachers,  hospital  superintendents  of  nurses,  superintendents 
of  visiting  nurse  associations,  school  nurses,  visiting  nurses, 
and  so  on. 

The  supervisor-in-chief  of  a  recently  established  child 
conservation  service  under  a  state  department  of  health 
says:  "If  I  had  my  life  to  live  over  again,  I  should  make  a 
great  effort  to  get  a  college  education  and  I  should  also  enter 
a  large,  well-known  hospital  for  training.  I  feel  that  my  year 
of  teaching  in  a  country  school,  which  I  consider  part  of  my 
general  education,  was  most  helpful,  as  was  my  post- 
graduate course  in  public  health." 

The  superintendent  of  a  large  visiting  nurse  association 
says :  "Get  first  a  good  hospital  training'  some  private  duty, 
and  plan  for  post-graduate  work  in  social  theory.  Promo- 
tion in  our  association  used  to  be  automatic.  It  now  depends 
on  work,  ability,  personality,  etc." 

Another  nurse  doing  state  child  conservation  work  says : 
"Have  at  least  a  high  school  education ;  train  in  the  hospital 
giving  the  best  training  in  surgery,  obstetrics,  children,  and 
infant  feeding."    She  regrets  her  lack  of  college  education. 

The  "social  welfare  nurse"  in  a  mining  company  says: 
"This  corporation  are  highly  desirable  employers,  apprecia- 
tive of  their  employees.  They  give  prizes  for  better  gardens 
and  fewer  accidents  in  mines.  ...  In  the  first  year  they 
gave  me  a  week  to  visit  other  industrial  plants ;  in  the  sec- 
ond, a  six  weeks'  course  at  the  Chicago  School  of  Civics  and 
Philanthropy;  in  the  third,  a  trip  to  the  Anti-Tuberculosis 


94         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

Convention."  Her  work  includes  bedside  nursing,  investiga- 
tion, teaching,  infant  welfare,  and  pre-natal  care. 

The  single  nurse  in  a  large  automobile  manufacturing 
company  says :  "It  is  an  old  corporation,  and  I  believe  they 
are  adjusting  things  to  modern  thought  and  needs  as  fast  as 
possible.  However,  much  remains  to  be  done.  There  is  no 
special  training  available  in  this  city.  I  keep  in  touch  with 
other  workers  through  the  American  Journal  of  Nursing, 
the  Public  Health  Quarterly,  and  through  conventions, 
which  I  have  leave  of  absence  without  pay  to  attend." 

A  staff  nurse  in  a  rubber  company  employing  5,000  people 
is  assigned  to  first-aid  and  illness  work.  She  is  under  a 
physician  and  a  non-medical  man  superintendent  of  the 
health  department.  She  says:  "Each  nurse  has  her  own 
line  of  responsibiHties.  They  must  have  ability  to  handle  all 
nationalities  of  men  and  women.  The  company  provides 
dining-room,  rest-room,  and  reading-rooms  in  care  of  a 
matron." 

The  employment  manager  of  a  large  metal  products  fac- 
toi-y  says :  "The  nurse  has  a  good  deal  of  authority  in  ad- 
mitting to  work  people  who  have  been  out  sick  and  in  regu- 
lating the  cleanHness,  ventilation,  and  improvements  in  the 
mill." 

About  fifteen  years  ago,  the  realization  that  hospital  care 
was  often  only  partially  and  temporarily  successful  because 
of  ignorance  of  a  patient's  home,  family,  and  occupational 
circumstances  and  of  the  agencies  to  bring  to  bear  upon 
conditions  needing  correction  or  improvement ;  that  return- 
ing a  convalescent  to  the  very  situation  that  caused  or  con- 
tributed to  his  illness  was  a  stupid  human  and  economic 
waste,  led  to  the  idea  of  employing  a  trained  social  case 
worker  as  a  hospital  home  visitor,  or,  as  she  came  to  be 
called,  a  hospital  social  worker.  With  later  specializations, 
the  social  worker  attached  to  a  general  hospital,  dispensary, 
or  clinic  has  come  to  be  known  as  a  medical  social  worker ; 
the  worker  attached  to  a  mental  or  psychopathic  hospital, 
ward,  clinic,  or  other  agency,  has  come  to  be  known  as  a 
psychiatric  or  mental-hygiene  social  worker.  Both  groups 
have  recently  united  to  form  the  American  Association  of 


OTHER  HEALTH  SERVICES  95 

Hospital  Social  Workers,  which  has  representation  in  the 
Conference  on  Hospital  Service,  made  up  of  delegates  from 
fifteen  national  organizations  having  more  or  less  special 
interest  in  hospital  work. 

The  two  groups,  medical  and  psychiatric,  have  their  own 
problems  of  training  and  practice;  but  each  has  much  to 
learn  from  the  other.  They  both  work  under  medical  super- 
vision with  "in-patients"  or  "out-patients."  So  far,  there- 
fore, their  purpose  has  been  rehabilitation  rather  than  pre- 
vention. But  their  intimate  acquaintance  with  the  patient 
and  his  circumstances  enables  them  to  carry  on  consider- 
able educational  work  with  his  family  and  associates  and 
to  furnish  invaluable  data  to  agencies  working  for  educa- 
tion and  preventive  legislation.  Workers  with  this  training 
are  being  increasingly  employed  by  public  health  organiza- 
tions and  by  social  agencies. 

The  first  full-time  medical  social  worker  was  appointed  in 
1905  in  the  out-patient  department  of  the  Massachusetts 
General  Hospital  in  Boston  through  the  efforts  of  Dr. 
Richard  C.  Cabot.^  Partial  beginnings  had  already  been 
made  in  this  country  and  elsewhere  through  out-patient  de- 
partments, after-care  committees,  and  visiting  nurse  associa- 
tions. To-day  there  are  not  far  from  three  hundred  hos- 
pitals in  the  United  States  employing  social  workers,  some 
of  them  with  large  staffs.^ 

There  is  still  discussion  as  to  whether  the  medical  social 
worker  should  have  had  nurse's  training,  and  considerable 
difference  of  opinion.  Some  of  the  most  successful  have 
been  nurses ;  others  equally  successful  have  not  been.  Miss 
Gardner  says:  "The  nurse  who  takes  up  medical  social 
service  work  differs  from  other  public  health  nurses  in 
that  she  deliberately  enters  another  profession  .  .  .  her 
nurse's  training,  though  most  valuable,  and  in  the  opinion 
of  many,  indispensable,  becomes  at  the  same  time  almost 
worthless,  unless  it  is  supplemented  by  a  thorough  work- 
ing knowledge  of  the  fundamental  principles  of  modem 
social  work."^ 

*See  his  Social  Work  (1919),  especially  Introduction  and  Part  I. 
'See  Edna  G.  Henry.    Modern  Hospital.     Mar  '     ■ 
*  Piiblic  Health  Nursing,  pp.  320,  321.    See  all 


96         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

Dr.  Cabot  says :  "It  may  be  said  with  truth  that  the 
training  of  a  nurse,  as  we  know  it  in  America,  at  any 
rate,  really  unfits  a  woman  in  some  respects  for  the  work 
of  a  social  worker,  since  it  accustoms  her  to  habitual  obedi- 
ence and  subordination."  ^ 

There  seems  an  increasing  need  for  both  types  of  health 
worker  and  nothing  to  be  gained  by  breaking  down  the 
distinction  between  them,  although  they  should  work  in 
active  cooperation.  The  special  techniques  of  the  medical 
or  psychiatric  social  worker  are  those  of  family  case  work 
and  modern  applied  psychology ;  her  general  background  and 
connections  are  medical.  The  special  techniques  of  the 
public  health  nurse  are  those  of  medical  assistance  and 
care  and  the  encouragement  of  health  conditions ;  her  gen- 
eral background  and  connections  are  social  and  civic.  The 
function  of  both  is  educational ;  but  their  professional  and 
social  functions  are  distinct. 

The  psychiatric  social  worker  is  a  much  more  recent  and 
more  specialized  development  than  the  medical  social  worker. 
Neither  her  title  nor  her  training  took  definite  form  until 
the  summer  of  1918,  when  Smith  College  and  the  Boston 
State  Psychopathic  Hospital,  with  an  advisory  committee 
of  the  National  Committee  for  Mental  Hygiene,  established 
as  a  war-emergency  measure  the  Smith  College  Training 
School  of  Psychiatric  Social  Work  with  an  intensive  course 
of  eight  weeks,  followed  by  nine  months  of  supervised 
practice  training  under  leading  hospitals  and  social  agen- 
cies.^ Over  sixty  students  completed  the  course,  which  now 
requires  two  summers.  The  New  York  School  of  Social 
Work  began  in  1919-1920  a  two-year  course  in  mental 
hygiene  and  psychiatric  social  work  under  the  direction 
of  a  distinguished  social  psychiatrist.  It  also  offers  a  course 
in  medical  social  service.  The  Philadelphia  School  of  Social 
Service  announces  similar  courses ;  and  other  schools  are 
following. 

'  Social  Work,  p.  19.  See  also  Ida  M.  Cannon.  Social  Work  in 
Hospitals  (1913)  and  file  of  Mental  Hygiene. 

'  For  a  year  or  so  before  1918,  a  small  group  of  college  grad- 
uates had  received  apprentice  training  at  the  Boston  Psychopathic 
Hospital,  under  Miss  Mary  C.  Jarrett,  chief  of  social  service  and 
later  director  of  the  Smith  School. 


OTHER  HEALTH  SERVICES  97 

Even  before  the  war,  a  growing  number  of  mental  hospi- 
tals employed  social  workers  with  more  or  less  training, 
chiefly  for  after-care  work  with  paroled  or  discharged  pa- 
tients. These  must  not  be  confused  with  eugenics  workers, 
whose  main  object  is  to  trace  the  family  histories  of  cases. 
During  the  war  there  was  systematic  and  enlightened  pro- 
vision for  the  first  time  in  history  for  the  treatment  of 
mental  and  nervous  disturbance  and  disease  among  sol- 
diers. The  large  number  of  cases  of  "shell-shock,"  the 
popular  misnomer  for  all  forms  of  "war  psychosis,"  has 
called  attention  to  the  presence  of  an  even  larger  number  of 
persons  in  civil  life  of  unstable  or  "psychopathic"  make-up 
as  distinguished  from  the  legally  insane ;  and  has  brought  us 
to  the  point  where  it  is  possible  to  wage  a  great  campaign 
for  mental  health  under  the  leadership  of  the  National 
Committee  for  Mental  Hygiene,  with  the  cooperation  of  doc- 
tors, social  workers,  nurses,  parents,  teachers,  employers  and 
employed.  We  are  coming  to  recognize  the  necessary  co- 
operation of  the  psychiatrist,  the  psychologist,  and  the  spe- 
cially trained  social  worker  in  the  juvenile  court,  children's 
societies,  organizations  and  institutions  for  delinquents  of 
all  sorts.  We  are  at  the  beginning  of  studying  the  conditions 
of  industrial  mental  health.  The  American  Red  Cross  has 
employed  a  considerable  number  of  psychiatric  social  work- 
ers both  with  returned  soldiers  and  with  civilians,  sending 
them  to  be  trained  at  the  Smith  School  of  Social  Work 
and  elsewhere. 

Three  medical  and  six  psychiatric  social  workers  filled 
our  schedules.  In  the  medical  group  salaries  range  from 
$1,500  to  $2,600  with  a  median  salary  of  $1,800,  and  ages 
range  from  thirty-five  to  forty-five.  In  the  psychiatric 
group  salaries  range  from  $960  to  $1,500  with  a  median 
salary  of  $1,160;  ages  from  twenty-five  to  thirty-five.  These 
last  figures  indicate  the  newness  of  the  psychiatric  field. 
The  lowest  salaries  paid  in  1918  represent  positions  of  a 
learner-in-service  or  apprentice  character.  Probably  to-day 
beginners  with  special  training  in  psychiatric  social  work, 
including  supervised  practice,  would  receive  from  $1,200  to 
$1,800.    They  should  receive  not  less  than  $1,400.    Two  of 


98         WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

the  medical  social  workers  are  graduate  nurses;  none  of  the 
psychiatric. 

One  of  the  medical  group  is  a  college  graduate  with  a 
master's  degree  in  sociology ;  another  has  had  special  college 
courses,  nurse's  training,  and  a  two  years'  course  in  a  school 
of  social  work.  Five  of  the  psychiatric  group  are  college 
graduates :  one  is  a  doctor  of  philosophy  in  psychology ;  two 
have  had  training  in  schools  of  social  work.  All  have  had 
previous  experience  in  some  form  of  social  case  work.  One 
has  previously  been  a  medical  social  worker.  Four  are  con- 
nected with  the  social  service  of  psychopathic  hospitals ;  one 
is  social  worker  in  a  state  hospital  for  the  insane;  one  is 
social  service  director  in  a  state  committee  for  mental 
hygiene. 

The  suggestions  given  by  these  workers  are  characteristic 
of  those  who  have  blazed  their  way  in  a  new  field  and  who 
realize  the  economy  of  securing  through  proper  training 
what  they  themselves  have  had  to  acquire  through  the 
rougher  methods  of  ability  profiting  by  experience. 

A  pioneer  head  of  a  great  hospital  department  says :  "Get 
the  best  possible  social  training  with  case  w^ork  experience. 
Get,  if  possible,  medical  training.  Get  experience  in  a  hos- 
pital social  service  department.  The  most  valuable  things  in 
my  general  education  have  been  living  in  various  parts  of 
the  country  and  meeting  people  of  various  economic  stand- 
ards quite  naturally ;  in  my  professional  training,  familiarity 
with  hospital  life  and  technique,  appreciation  of  the  psychol- 
ogy of  sick  people,  knowledge  of  feeble-minded  children.  I 
wish  that  I  had  had  more  definite  medical  training,  more 
familiarity  with  convalescent  patients,  more  technical  re- 
search training,  more  languages,  especially  French,  German, 
and  Italian." 

A  leader  in  psychiatric  social  work  says :  "Only  those 
temperamentally  suited  to  the  work  should  undertake  it.  It 
requires  personality  above  everything ;  next  to  that,  maturity 
and  emotional  stability  and  a  background  of  special  train- 
ing in  psychology.  In  my  general  education  the  things  most 
helpful  for  my  working  experience  were  teaching  and  tutor- 
ing for  my  tuition,  debating,  public-speaking,  and  dra- 
matics; in  my  professional  training,  working  out  philosophy 


OTHER  HEALTH  SERVICES       99 

and  psychology  that  could  be  used.  In  my  own  education 
too  much  time  was  consumed  in  public  school,  too  much  time 
wasted  on  dead  languages.  There  were  no  opportunities 
for  creative  work  through  use  of  the  hands  and  no  practical 
contacts  with  real  life." 

Another  psychiatric  social  worker  says :  "Psychiatric  so- 
cial workers  need  two  years,  preferably  at  a  school  of  social 
work,  particularly  along  medical-social  and  psychiatric- 
social  lines.  In  college  I  should  advise  courses  in  psychol- 
ogy, economics,  one  of  the  exact  sciences,  and  some  foreign 
language  courses." 

Another  says:  "In  my  college  education  I  should  have 
had  more  emphasis  laid  on  psychology  and  economics,  both 
theoretical  and  practical;  in  my  professional  training  more 
practical  experience." 

Another  type  of  health  worker  too  often  confused  with 
the  psychiatric  social  worker  is  the  occupational  therapist. 
This  group  received  a  large  amount  of  attention  during  the 
war  on  account  of  the  plans  made  by  the  Surgeon  General's 
Office  for  the  use  of  curative  or  "diversional"  occupations 
in  the  military  hospitals  and  the  calls  issued  by  its  division 
of  physical  reconstruction  for  "aids  in  occupational 
therapy."  War  emergency  training  courses  in  this  field  were 
offered  by  Columbia  U^niversity  and  in  Boston,  Philadelphia, 
Chicago,  and  elsewhere.  For  several  years  the  Illinois 
Society  for  Mental  Hygiene  has  maintained  the  Henry 
Baird  Favill  School  of  Occupations  in  cooperation  with  Hull 
House  and  the  Chicago  School  of  Civics  and  Philanthropy. 
For  a  number  of  years  physicians  and  psychologists  have 
realized  the  value  of  handicraft  occupations  for  convales- 
cents and  their  therapeutic  influence  in  nervous  and  mental 
disease.^  Private  hospitals  and  sanitariums  have  established 
departments  of  arts  and  crafts, — weaving,  wood-carving, 
basketry,  modeling,  and  so  on.  State  hospitals  have  em- 
ployed patients  in  gardening  and  farming  and  in  various 
forms  of  shop-work,  mattress,  brush,  and  basket  making, 
chair-caning,    and    the    like.      In    some    training    schools 

'See  George  Edward  Barton.  Occupations  for  the  Sick  (1920). 
Herbert  J.  Hall.    Handicrafts  for  the  Handicapped  (1915). 


100        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

nurses  have  received  instruction  in  craft  occupations. 
For  the  most  part,  however,  this  work  has  not  been 
closely  correlated  with  medical  diagnosis  and  treatment, 
and  has  been  for  the  purpose  of  keeping  patients  occupied 
and  quiet  as  much  as  for  strictly  therapeutic  purposes. 
It  has  commonly  been  in  charge  of  an  arts  and  crafts 
worker  who  was  neither  a  psychologist  nor  a  psychiatric 
social  worker.  In  general  hospitals  it  has  been  little  em- 
ployed. In  the  military  hospitals  and  especially  in  Base 
Hospital  117,  to  which  men  suffering  from  nervous  and 
mental  disorders  were  sent  directly  from  the  front,  serious 
efforts  were  made  to  study  the  whole  matter  of  work 
psychology  and  to  make  the  workshop  an  integral  part  of 
medical  treatment.^  On  the  basis  of  the  war  experience,  the 
subject  of  occupational  therapy  is  likely  to  receive  much 
more  careful  and  scientific  consideration.  Columbia 
University  is  considering  the  establishment  of  a  two-year 
course  of  training.  There  is  a  National  Society  for  the 
Promotion  of  Occupational  Therapy.  As  yet  the  occupa- 
tional therapist  can  hardly  be  thought  of  as  a  fully  pro- 
fessional health  worker ;  but  the  movement  has  been  of 
value  in  calling  attention  to  the  intimate  relations  between 
suitable  occupation  and  physical  and  mental  health.  A 
group  of  experts,  centering  about  the  Boston  Psychopathic 
Hospital,  have  begun  research  work  on  the  psychology  and 
psychopathology  of  industrial  employments,  an  inquiry  of 
the  utmost  importance. 


Still  another  health  worker  of  whom  the  war  made  use  in 
new  ways  is  the  teacher  or  director  of  physical  education. 
The  older  notion  of  physical  training  as  a  matter  of  formal 
drill  and  gymnastic  exercise  has  been  yielding  for  some  years 
to  a  less  formal  and  more  constructive  view  of  health 
through  hygienic  living,  including  proper  exercise,  diet, 
sleep,  bathing,  clothing,  posture,  and  recreation.  Active  re- 
search has  been  going  on  in  all  these  fields  and  in  the  field  of 
physical  measurements  and  records.     The  Playground  and 

*  See  Sidney  L.  Schwab.  The  Experiment  in  Occupat'otml  Ther- 
apy at  Base  Hospital  117,  A.  E.  F.    Mental  Hygiene.    October,  1919. 


11  ?  1 

OTHER  HEALTH  SERVICES  "loi 

Recreation  Association  of  America  has  fostered  a  wide- 
spread interest  in  group  plays,  games,  dances,  pageants,  and 
festivals.  Music  and  exercise  have  been  combined  in  rhyth- 
mic gymnastics.  Love  of  outdoor  life,  wood-lore,  and  camp 
activities  has  been  encouraged  by  such  organizations  as  Boy 
and  Girl  Scouts,  Camp-Fire  Girls,  "hiking  clubs,"  and  sim- 
ilar enterprises.  There  are  a  number  of  good  schools  of 
physical  education,  some  of  them  connected  with  colleges 
and  universities.  Young  women  of  intelligence,  physical 
vigor,  liking  for  young  people,  power  of  leadership,  and 
social  imagination  will  find  many  opportunities  in  this 
field  of  health  work.  Positions  exist  not  only  in  schools 
and  colleges,  both  public  and  private,  but  in  public 
playgrounds,  Young  Women's  Christian  Associations,  set- 
tlements, community  centers,  organizations  for  boys  and 
girls  and  for  young  women.  There  is  a  growing  move- 
ment toward  employing-  directors  of  physical  education 
and  recreation  in  stores  and  factories.  Workers  in  cor- 
rective gymnastics  are  employed  by  orthopedic  surgeons 
and  in  orthopedic  hospitals,  classes  and  schools  for  crip- 
pled children.  "Aids  in  physiotherapy"  were  in  great 
demand  by  the  Surgeon  General's  Office  for  work  in  mili- 
tary hospitals  to  assist  in  restoring  the  functions  of  joints 
and  muscles.  A  Summer  School  for  Industrial  Health 
Officers  was  conducted  at  Mount  Holyoke  College  in  1918 
to  prepare  women  with  college  or"  equivalent  training  and 
some  industrial  experience  to  act  as  health  leaders  for 
women  employed  in  munitions  factories  or  other  factories 
working  on  war  contracts  for  the  government.  It  is  the  belief 
of  Dr.  Kristine  Mann,  the  director  of  the  course,  and  others 
in  this  field  that  there  is  need  of  such  a  trained  health  of- 
ficer or  industrial  hygienist  wherever  there  are  large  groups 
of  women  employed  in  industry  or  commerce,  to  furnish 
positive  health  guidance  and  suggestion  in  all  matters  of 
daily  living.  They  hold  that  the  industrial  nurse  is  too 
much  identified  with  ideas  and  techniques  connected  with 
sickness  to  be  able  to  do  this  successfully.  It  is  hardly 
necessary  to  say  that  industrial  nurses  do  not  agree. 
Whether  there  is  a  permanent  and  developing  place  for  this 
new  type  of  health  worker  remains  to  be  seen.    Those  most 


I02       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

interested  are  making  plans  for  a  thoroughly  professional 
course  of  training,  which  shall  include  the  first  two  years 
of  medical  preparation.  It  may  well  be  that  all  health 
workers  who  are  not  physicians  need  a  more  solid  founda- 
tion than  they  receive  at  present  in  the  anatomical,  physio- 
logical, bacteriological,  and  chemical  aspects  of  medicine. 
It  is  certain  that  they  need  more  psychology  and  mental 
hygiene.  In  any  event,  physical  education  is  a  type  of  social 
and  public  health  work  that  should  increasingly  attract 
young  college  women  who  are  robust,  courageous,  active  in 
mind  and  body.  Physical  and  play  directors  occupy  a- 
strategic  position  as  social  workers  without  the  label.  They 
often  do  the  finest  kind  of  service  for  citizenship  and  the 
community  through  bringing  native  and  foreign-born  groups 
together  in  recreational  activities  and  through  providing 
wholesome  expression  for  that  spirit  of  youth  which  too 
often  finds  its  only  outlet  in  the  city  streets. 

The  war  has  likewise  shown  us  that  the  social  hygiene 
worker  is  in  a  very  direct  sense  a  health  worker,  and  that 
the  spread  of  venereal  diseases  can  be  controlled  and  higher 
standards  established  only  by  a  "four-fold  program  of  edu- 
cation, law  enforcement,  recreation,  and  medical  measures," 
to  quote  the  program  of  the  American  Social  Hygiene  Asso- 
ciation. Every  probation  officer  or  other  worker  with  de- 
linquent or  wayward  women  and  girls  should  know  both 
the  medical  and  the  mental  elements  involved ;  and  it  may 
not  be  long  before  special  professional  courses  will  be 
planned  for  health  workers  in  these  fields  who  are  neither 
doctors  nor  nurses.^ 

*  Nutrition  workers  are  dealt  with  in  Chapter  VII,  scientific 
workers  in  health  laboratories  in  Chapter  XVII. 


CHAPTER  VI 

FOOD  AND  LIVING  SERVICES  :  I 

The  war  and  the  difficult  period  since  its  close  have  pre- 
sented on  a  world  scale  the  methods  and  problems  of  food 
production,  distribution,  and  consumption,  and  have  shown 
us  that  agriculture,  marketing  of  food  products,  and  "home 
economics"  are  interrelated  and  not  separate  fields.  Even 
to-day  it  is  probable  that  most  of  us  do  not  realize  the  extent 
to  which  we  were  educated  in  matters  of  food-supply  and 
food-uses  during  the  war,  nor  how  well  this  knowledge  is 
serving  us  in  meeting  the  present  exaggerated  cost  of  living 
and  labor  shortage.  Before  the  war  we  were  a  notably 
wasteful  and  unthinking  people  as  regards  food  and  living 
expenditures.  We  have  still  much  to  learn.  But  the  war 
activities  of  the  Department  of  Agriculture  and  the  Food 
Administration  provided  in  effect  a  great  system  of  publicity 
and  extension  teaching.  Local  war-gardens,  canning  clubs, 
municipal  markets,  and  "clothes  clinics"  were  demonstration 
stations.  The  use  of  flour,  sugar,  meat,  and  fat  substitutes 
provided  a  course  in  food  values ;  and  the  wide  distribution 
of  food  price-lists  a  course  in  food  economics.  The 
work  of  the  Commission  for  Relief  in  Belgium,  the  Amer- 
ican Relief  Commission,  and  unofficial  agencies  have  taught 
us  to  think  of  food  and  living  conditions  in  the  barest  terms 
of  human  health  and  welfare  and  as  underlying  all  sound 
international  relations.  Especially  have  they  tragically  re- 
vealed that  the  very  life  of  peoples  depends  upon  the  proper 
nutrition  of  mothers  and  children ;  and  have  led  us  to  con- 
front with  new  energy  and  understanding  the  problems  of 
malnutrition  of  children  and  adults  in  our  own  country. 
Here  the  federal  Children's  Bureau,  and  various  pubHc 
health  and  home  economics  organizations  are  leading  the 

103 


104       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

way.  On  the  economic  side,  the  great  thrift  campaign  of 
the  federal  Treasury  Department  and  the  Federal  Reserve 
banks  is  reenforced  by  financial  and  social  agencies  in  the 
endeavor  to  show  that  thrift  is  a  matter  not  merely  of  saving 
but  of  intelligent  planning  and  spending.  The  enforcement 
of  prohibition  through  the  eighteenth  amendment  and  the 
wider  participation  of  women  in  public  affairs  through  the 
passage  of  the  nineteenth  amendment  both  have  direct  bear- 
ings upon  problems  of  food  and  living,  and  promise  better 
coordinated  and  more  enlightened  action. 

Food,  clothing,  housing  are  all  in  a  new  sense  public  ques- 
tions, intimately  connected  with  health,  industry,  and  recrea- 
tion. The  agencies  supplying  them  are  coming  to  be  looked 
upon  as  "public  utilities."  The  cost  of  living  and  new  ideas 
regarding  the  relations  of  workers  and  employers  are  lead- 
ing to  quantity-feeding  projects  on  an  unprecedented  scale 
and  to  a  revolution  in  methods  of  service  through  cafe- 
terias, canteens,  cooked-food  services,  etc.,  in  factories, 
stores,  office-buildings,  residence  neighborhoods.  They  are 
sharply  modifying  practices  in  hotels,  restaurants,  education- 
al and  other  institutions.  Here  again,  the  quantity-feeding 
enterprises  during  the  war  have  provided  invaluable  expe- 
rience, although  many  peace-time  applications  and  develop- 
ments remain  to  be  worked  out.  It  is  undoubtedly  because 
of  these  demonstrations  as  well  as  because  of  coercive  cur- 
rent prices  that  the  cooperative  movement  among  consumers 
appears  for  the  first  time  to  be  taking  vigorous  root  in  the 
United  States.^ 

Two  great  government  agencies,  the  Department  of  Agri- 
culture and  the  Federal  Board  for  Vocational  Education, 
established  in  191 7,  cooperate  actively  with  the  states,  en- 
couraging in  every  possible  way  the  most  modern  ideas  and 
practices  in  food  production,  distribution,  and  consumption, 
and  the  best  modern  methods  of  education  along  these  lines. 
Educationally,  the  Department  of  Agriculture  is  most  closely 
allied  with  the  state  agricultural  and  mechanical  colleges  and 
the  state  experiment  stations ;  the  Federal  Board  with  agri- 
cultural and  industrial  training  in  secondary  and  special 
vocational  schools.    But  the  Board  contributes  funds  to  the 

'  See  publications  of  the  Cooperative  League  of  America, 


FOOD  AND  LIVING  SERVICES  105 

states  for  the  training  of  vocational  teachers  in  universities, 
colleges,  and  normal  schools.  The  Department  of  Agricul- 
ture is  one  of  the  great  research  agencies  of  the  world,  and 
carries  on  tireless  investigations  through  its  bureaus  of 
plant  and  animal  industry,  chemistry,  soils,  entomology,  bio- 
logical survey,  weather,  and  crop  estimates.  Its  bureaus  of 
markets  and  public  roads  study  problems  of  packing,  ship- 
ping, storing,  and  marketing;  its  office  of  farm  manage- 
ment studies  methods  of  farm  accounting  and  farm  admin- 
istration. In  many  of  its  bureaus  professional  women  with 
scientific  or  other  training  are  employed.^ 

Through  its  States  Relations  Service,  established  in  1914, 
the  Department  of  Agriculture  puts  all  its  resources  of  or- 
ganization and  expert  information  at  the  disposal  of  the 
states,  and  with  them  has  built  up  a  great  system  of  county 
farm  bureaus  and  county  agricultural  and  home  demonstra- 
tion agents.  In  spite  of  the  dislocations  of  the  war,  it  had 
by  July,  1918,  organized  some  counties  in  every  state  in 
the  Union ;  and  in  a  number  of  states,  such  as  Alabama, 
Connecticut,  Delaware,  Maine,  Massachusetts,  Minnesota, 
New  York,  Rhode  Island,  South  Carolina,  Tennessee,  a 
practically  complete  service  of  both  men  and  women  agents 
in  every  agricultural  county.  During  the  war  additional 
women  agents  were  appointed,  some  of  them  in  urban  cen- 
ters, to  aid  in  food  conservation.  Since  the  war,  these  city 
agents  have  been  reduced  from  183  to  24,  in  spite  of  a 
demonstrated  nee'd  for  their  services.  All  along  the  line,  in 
fact,  reduced  Congressional  appropriations  are  crippling  the 
important  work  of  the  States  Relations  Service.  Between 
October,  1918,  and  October,  1919,  the  men's  work  was  cur- 
tailed 9.6  per  cent;  the  boys'  and  girls'  club  work,  25.2  per 
cent;  the  women's  work,  38.9  per  cent.  The  number  of 
women  in  the  state  and  county  home  demonstration  service 
was  reduced  from  1,825  to  1,115.  Meanwhile,  lack  of  farm 
labor  and  cost  of  farm  supplies  are  threatening  a  food  short- 
age even  more  serious  than  that  during  the  war.  There  is 
imperative  need  for  expert  agricultural  assistance. 

This  work  is  carried  on  jointly  by  the  state  agricultural 
colleges  and  the  Department  of  Agriculture.    Administration 

'See  Chapter  XVII. 


io6       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

and  appointments  to  positions  are  in  the  hands  of  the  states. 
Applications  should  be  made  tO'  the  Extension  Divisions  of 
the  several  state  agricultural  colleges.  But  these  not  infre- 
quently call  upon  Washington  to  recommend  experienced 
workers.  In  so  new  and  so  extensive  a  system,  there  are 
many  opportunities  for  constructive  and  experimental  work. 
On  the  other  hand,  as  in  all  government  services,  there  is  a 
certain  amount  of  inelasticity  and  red  tape  and  the  ever- 
present  danger  of  reduced  federal  and  state  appropria- 
tions. 

Some  of  the  best  trained  women  in  the  field  of  home 
economics  have  held  positions  in  the  States  Relations  Serv- 
ice, either  as  members  of  the  central  staff  in  Washington  or 
in  the  field  service  of  the  states.  The  requirements  in  gen- 
eral are  a  college  education  with  standard  courses  in  home 
economics  and  appropriate  experience  and  personality.  The 
state  agricultural  colleges  have  given  special  attention  to 
home  economics  training  for  women,  and  many  of  them 
have  strong  departments.  But  even  in  these  colleges,  there 
has  been  too  great  a  separation  between  home  economics 
and  agriculture  proper.  There  is  an  increase  in  the  num- 
ber of  women  seeking  training  in  agriculture ;  and  there 
seems  no  reason  why  women  should  not  become  at  least 
assistant  agricultural  agents  in  county  farm  bureaus  as  well 
as  home  demonstration  agents.  But  even  in  this  capacity 
they  should  be  able  to  foster  the  agricultural  interests  of 
farm  women  to  a  greater  extent  than  they  often  do  at 
present. 

There  are  opportunities  for  young  women  with  good  train- 
ing and  some  supervised  field  work  to  become  county  agents 
with  little  other  experience.  It  seems  desirable  that  the 
agricultural  colleges  should  work  out  some  system  of  prac- 
tice training  for  their  women  students  in  agriculture  and 
home  economics  in  connection  with  county  farm  bureaus. 
Such  students  might  serve  as  assistants  during  the  summer. 
State  and  district  leaders  need  administrative  and  organizing 
ability  of  a  high  type,  the  spirit  of  educators,  and  a  sympa- 
thetic and  shrewd  understanding  of  the  rural  populations 
among  which  they  work.  Where  there  are  foreign  ele- 
ments in  these  populations,  they  have  a  chance  to  develop 


FOOD  AND  LIVING  SERVICES  107 

a  sound  kind  of  Americanization  work.  There  is  likely  to  be 
increasing  local  participation  and  control  in  county  agricul- 
tural work;  and  the  experts  concerned  need  a  belief  in  the 
principles  and  practices  of  democratic  leadership.  The 
county  is  coming  to  be  used  as  a  satisfactory  unit  of  ad- 
ministration in  various  movements  for  rural  betterment, — 
education,  health,  recreation.  Even  in  the  New  England 
States,  where  the  town  is  the  chief  administrative  unit,  the 
county  offers  the  chance  for  healthy  competition  among  the 
smaller  communities  of  which  it  is  made  up  and  an  escape 
from  local  prejudices  and  jealousies. 

The  county  home  demonstration  agent  works  side  by  side 
with  the  county  agricultural  agent  or  agents,  hitherto  always 
men ;  but  her  special  concern  is  with  women  and  girls  in 
farm  homes,  and  with  the  various  problems  of  rural  house- 
hold management.  She  organizes  and  addresses  clubs  ;  holds 
institutes;  prepares  exhibits;  gives  canning,  cooking,  sewing 
and  textile  demonstrations ;  encourages  budget-making  and 
thrift;  helps  toward  the  introduction  of  household  conven- 
iences and  laobr-saving  methods  of  work.  If  she  has  agri- 
cultural training,  she  may  also'  render  assistance  in  those 
phases  of  farm  life  with  which  women  are  most  closely 
concerned — gardening,  poultry,  small  fruits,  bee-keeping, 
certain  aspects  of  dairying.  She  can  hardly  fail  to  deal 
with  matters  of  home  heakh,  especially  on  the  side  of  proper 
nutrition.  She  must  be  courageous,  resourceful,  generously 
human,  and  physically  robust,  as  she  has  to  go  about  the 
county  in  all  kinds  of  weather,  often  by  automobile.  In 
many  respects  her  work  is  like  that  of  the  rural  public 
health  nurse ;  and,  in  fact,  in  the  country  as  in  the  city 
there  should  be  close  cooperation  between  home  economics 
workers  and  public  health  workers.  They  both  have  to  meet 
stubborn  country  prejudices  as  well  as  fine  countiy  self- 
respect  and  independence ;  and  they  both  learn  perhaps  quite 
as  much  as  they  teach.  No  one  who  does  not  like  country 
life  and  country  people  should  enter  either  service. 

The  war-time  experiment  of  city  home  demonstration 
agents  under  the  States  Relations  Service  was  too  brief  and 
too  exceptional  to  justify  discussion  here.  But  there  seems 
a  place  waiting  for  an  expert  worker  who  should  assist 


io8       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

city  populations  in  advantageous  purchasing  and  who  should 
have  back  of  her  the  various  efforts  of  the  Department  of 
Agriculture  and  the  states  to  improve  storage  and  market- 
ing facilities  and  to  establish  direct  connections  between 
agricultural  producers  and  city  consumers. 

Of  thirty  state  home  demonstration  leaders  in  the  nort:\ 
and  west,  two  are  paid  $i,8oo;  two,  $3,000;  the  majority 
about  $2,500.  The  average  for  the  thirteen  state  leaders  in 
the  south  is  probably  somewhat  lower.  The  salaries  of 
assistant  state  leaders  run  from  $1,500  to  $2,750;  of  county 
home  demonstration  agents  from  $1,400  to  $1,800  and  occa- 
sionally to  $2,500.  Traveling  expenses  and  maintenance 
while  away  from  headquarters  are  also  provided.  Of  six 
women  filling  our  schedules  in  1918,  the  assistant  director  of 
the  extension  division  of  a  southern  state,  in  charge  of 
home  demonstration  work,  received  $2,500;  the  state  home 
demonstration  agent  in  a  New  England  state,  $1,600;  the 
state  director  of  girls'  clubs  in  a  New  England  state,  only 
$1,200;  one  New  England  county  home  demonstration  agent, 
$1,400;  another,  only  $1,020,  a  war-emergency  city  home 
demonstration  leader,  $1,800.  One  has  had  work  in  an 
American  and  a  foreign  university ;  one  is  a  graduate  of  an 
eastern  college  with  two  years  in  home  economics  at  Sim- 
mons and  a  year  in  dietetics  at  Teachers  College;  two  are 
graduates  of  small  colleges  of  good  standing  with  a  four 
years'  course  in  home  economics  ;  one  is  a  graduate  of  a  nor- 
mal school  household  arts  department. 

A  state  leader  thus  sums  up  the  duties,  advantages  and 
disadvantages  of  her  work:  "I  organize  and  direct  home 
economics  work  in  the  state;  give  lectures  and  demonstra- 
tions ;  advise  women  ;  and  supervise  city,  county,  and  district 
workers.  I  have  an  assistant  and  nine  other  women  working 
under  my  direction.  The  work  has  grown,  and  is  most 
interesting.  Do  not  enter  it  unless  you  like  people  and  are 
willing  to  work.  A  person  must  be  willing  to  have  irregular 
hours,  often  traveling  Sunday  and  evenings.  Only  a  physi- 
cally strong  person  should  attempt  it.  All  of  my  education 
was  needed  as  a  background  for  my  work.  I  would  be  better 
fitted  if  I  could  have^had  more  training  in  English  composi- 
tion.    Some  of  my  technical  training  was  not  correlated  as 


FOOD  AND  LIVING  SERVICES  109 

closely  as  it  should  have  been  with  the  average  standard  of 
living." 


Farming  and  farm  management  as  occupations  for  pro- 
fessional women  are  fields  about  which  it  is  difficult  to  make 
authoritative  statements.  Conditions  of  farming  vary  great- 
ly in  different  parts  of  the  country,  and  call  for  diiferent 
investments  of  capital  and  different  types  of  training.  More- 
over in  no  occupation  does  success  depend  to  a  greater  de- 
gree upon  personal  determination,  persistence,  and  liking. 
On  the  other  hand,  in  no  occupation  is  it  easier  to  secure 
professional  training  and  expert  practical  advice  and  assist- 
ance. Agricultural  colleges,  county  farm  bureaus,  and  the 
Department  of  Agriculture  all  stand  ready  to  aid.  Women 
with  agricultural  training  may  become  independent  farmers, 
or  may  hold  salaried  positions  of  various  kinds.  Farming  is 
the  one  great  industry  of  the  country  in  which  the  small 
individual  proprietor  still  has  a  place,  and  is  likely  to  retain 
it.  For  the  woman  who  seeks  independence,  likes  country 
life,  is  not  afraid  of  hard  work  and  not  easily  discour- 
aged, there  is  a  real  business  opportunity  in  farming,  if  she 
will  go  into  it  as  seriously  as  into  any  other  business.  Like 
all  independent  enterprises,  it  requires  some  capital ;  and  at 
present  the  acute  shortage  of  labor  renders  it  particularly 
difficult  for  the  woman  farmer,  since  she  cannot  do  as  much 
of  the  hard  work  herself  as  a  man  can  do,  although  there 
is  not  so  great  a  discrepancy  in  this  respect  as  was  once 
assumed.  Farming  is  not  an  occupation  to  be  undertaken 
lightly,  ignorantly,  nor  sentimentally.  It  calls  for  constant 
expert  knowledge  and  the  most  careful  cost  accounting  if  it 
is  to  be  made  to  yield  even  a  moderate  income. 

The  1910  census  reported  260,272  women  as  general  or 
dairy  farmers ;  7,834  women  as  gardeners,  florists,  and  nurs- 
erymen. Probably  most  of  them  were  carrying  on  family 
farms  and  comparatively  few  of  them  professionally  trained 
in  agriculture  or  horticulture.  Over  half  were  widowed  or 
divorced.  Since  1910,  interest  in  country  life  has  markedly 
increased ;  and  war-time  undertakings  have  directed  the  at- 
tention of  educated  women  to  agriculture  as  a  profession. 


no       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

The  seasonal  work  of  the  Women's  Land  Army  is  being  con- 
tinued by  the  American  Land  Service  for  both  men  and 
women,  in  the  endeavor  to  meet  the  shortage  of  summer 
farm  labor.  The  1915  census  of  college  women  showed 
them  in  a  wide  variety  of  agricultural  occupations,  from 
general  and  truck  farmers  to  cattle-raisers,  orange  growers, 
ranchers,  Shetland  pony  breeders.  The  Women's  FaiTn  and 
Garden  Association  includes  in  its  membership  women  in 
agriculture  on  a  business  basis.  Since  the  war,  it  has  been 
offering  scholarships  in  agricultural  colleges  for  young 
women  with  war-emergency  agricultural  experience. 

In  1915-1916  the  Bureau  of  Education  reported  5,682 
women  in  agricultural  colleges ;  38,000  women  in  agricultural 
courses  of  all  types,  including  short  winter  courses  and  sum- 
mer schools,  as  against  33,891  and  82,000  men  respectively. 
Many  of  these  women,  however,  were  studying  home 
economics,  not  agriculture,  or,  in  the  east,  taking  advantage 
of  the  only  state-supported  institution  for  higher  education. 
In  that  year  135  women  received  first  degrees  in  agriculture  ; 
eight  received  higher  degrees.  Until  recently,  agricultural 
colleges  have  been  indifferent  to  women  students  of  agricul- 
ture proper.  There  are  two  small  schools  exclusively  for 
women :  the  School  of  Horticulture  at  Ambler,  Pennsyl- 
vania, and  the  School  of  Landscape  Architecture  and  Horti- 
culture at  Groton,  Massachusetts. 

While  buying  and  stocking  a  farm  requires  an  initial  in- 
vestment that  yields  no  immediate  return,  this  outlay  need 
not  be  large.  The  new  Federal  Land  Banks  make  long 
loans  on  easy  terms  to  people  genuinely  interested  in  farm- 
ing; and  it  is  not  difficult  to  borrow  money  on  farm  real- 
estate.  The  essential  thing  for  a  woman  going  into  farming 
as  a  profession  is  to  study  carefully  the  farming  possibili- 
ties of  her  intended  purchase  and  to  know  just  what  she 
intends  to  do  with  it.  If  she  expects  to  farm  on  a  rela- 
tively small  scale,  she  will  probably  do  well  to  specialize  to  a 
considerable  extent  but  also  to  supplement  her  main  crop  or 
product.  She  needs  to  estimate  what  she  can  raise  with 
profit,  and  to  study  her  marketing  facilities.  The  parcel- 
post  and  the  increasing  use  of  motor-truck  transportation 
are  constantly  extending  rural  markets.     If  her   farm  is 


FOOD  AND  LIVING  SERVICES  iii 

pleasantly  situated,  and  is  near  a  city,  a  motor  highway,  or  a 
college  community,  she  may  often  add  to  her  earnings  by 
maintaining  a  tea-room  or  taking  people  to  board  in  the 
summer  or  over  week-ends.  If  she  is  near  a  summer  or 
suburban  colony  or  hotel,  she  may  make  direct  deliveries 
of  vegetables,  fruit,  poultry,  eggs,  flowers,  and  so  save  costs 
of  transportation  and  middlemen's  charges.  But  these 
things  must  be  definitely  planned  for.  It  is  also  highly  im- 
portant to  look  carefully  into  the  community  and  personal 
resources  and  opportunities  of  the  neighborhood  in  which 
she  is  planning  to  buy  a  farm.  In  these  days  no  professional 
woman  has  a  right  to  go  into  farming  who  is  not  genuinely 
interested  in  country  people  and  ready  to  throw  in  her  lot 
with  them  without  a  tinge  of  patronage.  As  a  property 
owner  and  tax  payer  she  will  have  a  chance  to  share  in  com- 
munity affairs  and  problems  as  she  could  never  do  if  she 
represented  some  outside  agency.  In  considering  costs  of 
operation  and  questions  of  labor,  it  is  necessary  to  know 
the  amount  of  cooperation  among  the  farmers  of  the  neigh- 
borhood. Is  there  rotation  and  perhaps  joint  ownership 
of  expensive  machinery,  such  as  tractors,  threshing  machines, 
spraying  apparatus  ?  Are  motor-trucks  ever  owned  in  com- 
mon? Farmers  in  this  country,  especially  in  the  east,  are 
notoriously  individualistic;  but  various  cooperative  plans 
are  being  worked  out.  Rural  cooperative  societies,  so  suc- 
cessful in  Denmark  and  Ireland,  would  aid  both  in  the  pur- 
chasing of  farm  supplies  and  the  marketing  of  farm  prod- 
ucts. There  are  possibilities  of  farming  partnerships 
among  professional  women  and  of  small  groups  of  such 
women  buying  adjacent  farms  and  sharing  certain  expenses 
and  equipment. 

For  neither  men  nor  women  with  little  capital  is  farm- 
ing a  profession  that  commonly  yields  a  large  money  re- 
turn. But  investment  and  income  in  agricultural  pursuits 
vary  so  widely  that  it  is  hardly  safe  to  make  general  state- 
ments. A  background  of  farm  life  and  some  actual  farming 
experience  in  a  salaried  position  are  invaluable  assets  in 
addition  to  even  the  best  professional  training.  The  Leland 
Stanford  Junior  University  bulletin  on  Vocational  Informa- 
tion (1919)   says:  "When  it  comes  to  working  one's  own 


112       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

farm  there  are  so  many  kinds  of  farming — truck  gardening, 
grain  farming,  and  poultry  raising,  all  with  prompt  returns ; 
stock  raising,  which  requires  a  relatively  large  investment 
unsecured  by  land ;  and  fruit  growing,  which  requires  a  long 
wait — and  so  many  scales  on  which  one  may  farm,  that  it  is 
simply  impossible  to  fix  a  sum  requisite  for  a  safe  beginning. 
A  considerable  initial  investment  without  previous  farm  life 
would  be  a  very  doubtful  asset.  With  farm  experience  one 
can  safely  go  into  business  for  himself  with  a  very  small 
capital  by  renting."  Vocations  for  Business  and  Professional 
Woonen  says:  "Few  women  have  made  fortunes;  many  a 
bare  living.  An  income  of  $i,ooo  to  $1,500  a  year  in  addi- 
tion to  living  is  as  much  as  the  average  woman  expects  to 
get."  An  intensive  study  of  opportunities  in  agriculture  in 
IMassachusetts  for  both  men  and  women  made  in  1914  by 
the  Women's  Educational  and  Industrial  Union  ^  reveals 
financial  and  other  difficulties  as  they  existed  before  the 
w^ar ;  and  presents  a  somewhat  gloomy  picture.  It  may  well 
be  read  by  those  with  roseate  conceptions  of  the  possi- 
bilities of  farming.  But  in  these  days  the  prospect  of  even 
a  "bare  living"  in  addition  to  an  assured  home  in  healthful 
and  beautiful  surroundings,  congenial  and  independent 
work,  and  neighborhood  interests  and  affiliations,  is  making  a 
powerful  appeal  to  many  courageous  professional  women. 

For  women  professionally  trained  in  agriculture  who  are 
not  willing  or  not  ready  to  take  up  independent  farming, 
there  are  a  growing  number  and  variety  of  salaried  posi- 
tions. The  teaching  of  agriculture  in  the  schools  has  been 
greatly  stimulated  by  the  war  and  by  the  efforts  of  the 
Federal  Board  for  Vocational  Education,  the  School  Gar- 
den Army  of  the  United  States  Bureau  of  Education,  the 
National  War  Garden  Commission,  and  other  agencies.  The 
demand  for  trained  teachers  of  agriculture,  both  men  and 
women,  exceeds  the  supply.  This  work  is  carried  on  in 
rural  high  schools,  in  agricultural  vocational  schools,  and 
in  the  upper  grades  of  rural  elementary  schools.  The  school- 
and-home-project  method  is  increasingly  used.  It  frequently 
involves  the  teaching  of  applied  science  and  mathematics. 
?.Tany  cities  and  tow-ns  employ  school-garden  directors  and 

^Vocations  for  the  Trained  JJ^oiian.     Part  2  (1914). 


FOOD  AND  LIVING  SERVICES  113 

supervisors,  who  often  combine  this  work  with  teaching. 
There  is  also  a  growing  call  for  directors  of  community 
gardens  under  the  auspices  of  civic  or  social  organizations. 
Here  a  training  in  social  work  and  in  survey  and  exhibit 
methods  is   desirable  in  addition  to  agricultural  training. 

Professionally  trained  women  are  finding  increasing  op- 
portunities as  farm  and  garden  managers.  While  the  largest 
number  of  these  openings  are  probably  in  institutions  for 
delinquent  or  defective  women  and  girls,  they  are  also  to 
be  found  in  other  institutions  caring  for  women  and  chil- 
dren, in  certain  private  schools  for  girls,  in  connection  with 
industrial  and  commercial  organizations,  and  on  private 
estates  and  farms.  The  war  accustomed  employers  to  the 
idea  of  women  in  these  posts.  Certain  women  of  training 
and  experience  have  established  themselves  as  farm  or  gar- 
den consuhants.  In  some  cases  it  is  difficult  to  distinguish 
between  the  woman  landscape  architect  or  gardener  and 
the  woman  agricultural  consultant.  But  the  first  has  to 
do  with  the  planning  and  planting  of  an  estate  or  garden 
in  connection  with  the  architect ;  the  second  with  the 
direction  and  supervision  of  continuous  practical  opera- 
tion. 

Institutional  work  requires  an  active  and  informed  in- 
terest in  the  educational,  correctional,  and  therapeutic  ef- 
fects of  farm  and  garden  work  and  the  ability  to  direct 
and  control  the  groups  of  workers  handled.  It  provides  val- 
uable experience  on  both  the  agricultural  and  the  human 
sides.  Work  in  private  schools  or  on  private  estates  calls 
for  special  personal  and  social  qualities.  Several  of  the 
larger  schools  for  girls  now  maintain  farms  both  for  sup- 
plying the  school  table  and  for  the  instruction  and  recreation 
of  the  students.  Some  of  the  positions  on  large  private 
estates  are  highly  specialized.  The  professional  section 
of  the  United  States  Employment  Service  received  a  call 
for  a  "young  woman  skilled  in  poultry  work  both  theo- 
retical and  practical,  wlio  has  had  a  course  in  poultry 
culture  in  some  agricultural  college;  for  an  estate  where 
besides  poultry  there  is  a  pheasantry  with  different  kinds  of 
pheasants.  There  are  also  pea-fowls,  ducks,  and  bantams, 
and  it  is  intended  this  year  to  add  swans."    A  young  woman 


114        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

was  recommended  who  had  had  the  required  training  and 
experience  as  farm  manager  in  a  fashionable  school  for 
girls,  so  that  she  was  presumably  familiar  with  the  ways  of 
wealthy  employers,  if  not  with  all  the  lordly  birds  men- 
tioned. Factories  in  the  country  are  employing  women  to 
direct  agricultural  and  garden  work  for  their  employees. 
Railroads  maintain  demonstration  farms  and  gardens,  as 
well  as  landscape  gardening  around  their  stations. 

Salaries  in  agricultural  work  vary  according  to  the  kind 
and  amount  of  responsibility.  Those  paid  in  institutional 
work  are  low,  seldom  more  than  $1,200,  or  $1,500;  but  they 
include  maintenance.  The  Federal  Board's  Opportunity 
Monograph  on  Farm  Management  as  a  Vocation  says:  "The 
salary  paid  is  proportionate  to  experience  and  efficiency  and 
commensurate  with  that  of  other  callings.  It  may  be  small 
at  the  start,  but  will  increase  wnth  efficiency.  ^  Commonly 
farm  managers  and  superintendents  are  receiving  annually 
from  $1,000  to  $3,000,  and  on  large  estates  ofteri  $4,000  or 
$5,000,  with  many  perquisites,  such  as  dwelling,  garden 
and  truck  land,  fuel,  and  the  privilege  of  keeping  a  cow, 
pigs,  or  poultry.  ...  A  farm  boy,  after  two  years  at  an 
agricultural  college,  took  a  foreman's  position  starting  at 
$600  a  year  and  perquisites;  the  second  year  he  received 
$900;  then  became  manager  at  $1,800;  and  now  receives 
$3,000.  In  five  years  he  had  quadrupled  his  income." 
These  figures  apply  to  men,  but  they  furnish  a  useful  stand- 
ard for  women. 

Of  six  women  in  agriculture  who  filled  our  schedules,  two 
are  independent  farmers,  and  make  no  statements  regarding 
income.  Four  are  salaried  workers,  of  whoni  three  report 
salaries  ranging  in  1918  from  $900  and  living  to  $1,200 
and  living.  One  is  a  college  graduate  with  a  master's  degree 
from  a  university  college  of  agriculture ;  one  has  had  three 
years  of  college,  a  year  at  the  Lowthorpe  School,  and  short 
courses  at  a  university  college  of  agriculture.  One  is  a 
Pratt  Institute  graduate  with  long  agricultural  experience; 
one  has  studied  at  leading  schools  of  art  and  design,  and 
has  had  university  courses  in  agriculture  and  in  prison  prob- 
lems. A  New  England  dairy  farmer  has  had  special  courses 
at  her  state  agricultural  college  and  at  Simmons  College, 


FOOD  AND  LIVING  SERVICES  115 

and  has  worked  in  private  bacteriological  and  chemical  lab- 
oratories. The  other  farmer  manages  a  trans-Mississippi 
farm  of  twelve  hundred  acres  devoted  to  grain  and  stock- 
raising.  A  woman  with  experience  in  teaching  and  in  super- 
vising agricultural  work  in  a  state  reformatory  for  women 
and  in  the  extension  department  of  a  university  is  manager 
of  a  farm  in  connection  with  a  private  school  for  girls ;  an- 
other is  farm  manager  at  an  institution  for  orphan  girls ; 
another  manages  with  her  husband  the  demonstration  farms 
of  a  railroad ;  another  has  been  manager  of  a  group  of 
gardens  at  a  well-known  Atlantic  coast  summer  colony, 
manager  of  a  single  estate,  and  is  now  a  farm  and  garden 
consulting  expert. 

The  dairy  farmer  says :  *T  advise  business  and  agricul- 
tural education  following  a  good  general  education.  A 
course  in  a  business  school  is  almost  a  necessity  as  a  foun- 
dation." 

A  farm  manager  says :  "For  best  results,  take  practical 
farm  training  before  studying  at  college.  I  have  worked 
at  institutional  farm  management  since  I  first  took  a  farm 
position,  and  have  known  many  farm  managers,  both  men 
and  women,  who  have  had  some  college  experience  and  are 
utterly  lost  at  the  real  work." 

The  consulting  gardener  says :  "When  I  had  charge  of  an 
estate,  I  did  some  lecturing  and  consulting  gardening  work 
on  the  side,  after  hours  and  on  hoHdays.  By  consulting  gar- 
dening I  mean  that  I  was  called  upon  sometimes  to  lay  out  a 
flower  garden,  sometimes  to  plant  it,  or  to  give  advice  and 
remedies  on  soils,  plants,  trees,  shrubs,  or  on  vegetables  or 
forestry,  or  to  advise  on  animals  and  poultry.  I  am  some- 
times even  asked  to  buy  horses,  cattle,  and  pigs  for  my 
clients.  Anything  coming  under  garden  or  farm  work  is 
included  under  my  title  of  consulting  gardener.  A  land- 
scape architect  gave  me  my  start  in  this  work  by  giving  me 
the  care  of  six  flower  and  vegetable  gardens  for  a  summer. 
Since  that  time,  each  person  for  whom  I  have  worked  has 
passed  me  on  to  their  friends,  so  that  I  have  had  as  much 
consulting  work  as  I  could  do,  along  with  my  other  work." 
The  assistant  director  of  a  railroad  agricultural  development 
station  says:    "Our  work  includes  practical  market-garden, 


ii6       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

tree  and  bush  fruit  work,  dairy,  poultry,  swine,  forage, 
sugar-beets,  nut-bearing,  ornamental  and  shade  trees,  nurs- 
ery and  vineyard  work;  practical  investigations  in  market- 
ing and  fertilization  ;  entertainment  of  practical  and  scientific 
agriculturists ;  advising  and  directing  settlers ;  details  of 
office  and  data-keeping;  lecturing.  The  business  is  not  run 
for  direct  profit.  It  has  trebled  tonnage  and  increased 
population  many  fold." 


.^ 


CHAPTER  VII 

FOOD  AND  LIVING  SERVICES  :  II 

While  the  dire  events  of  the  past  few  years  have  driven 
home  the  necessity  of  increased  and  less  wasteful  produc- 
tion in  both  agriculture  and  industry,  they  have  at  the  same 
time  revealed  the  extent  to  which  these  processes  are  hin- 
dered by  unwise  spending  and  low  standards  of  health  and 
education ;  and  have  made  clear  that  the  burden  of  waste 
and  mismanagement  of  any  kind  falls  ultimately  upon  the 
consuming  group,  to  which  everybody  belongs.  Hence  we 
are  facing  a  period  of  unprecedented  attention  to  the  prob- 
lems of  distribution  and  consumption  in  the  interests  of 
human  welfare  and  productive  efficiency.  Practices  begun 
because  of  patriotism  are  continuing  because  of  the  forty- 
three  cent  dollar ;  and  we  are  beginning  to  realize  that  many 
of  our  old  ways  of  living  are  not  only  economically  but  also 
psychologically  obsolete.  The  old-fashioned  houseworker 
who  "lives  in"  is  being  replaced  by  the  worker  by  the  day 
or  hour;  arrangements  for  group  living  and  group  feeding 
are  being  enormously  extended ;  new  systems  of  wholesale 
and  retail  buying  of  food,  clothing,  and  household  supplies 
are  being  put  into  operation ;  household  practices  and  costs 
are  being  studied  almost  as  thoroughly  as  factory  or  office 
practices  and  costs. ^  There  is  a  new  science  of  individual 
and  group  budget-making.  A  movement  is  well  advanced 
to  have  textiles  and  clothing  legally  tested  and  labeled  in  the 
same  way  as  food  and  food  products.  Cleaning,  renovating, 
and  salvaging  are  becoming  scientifically  and  cooperatively 
organized.  All  sorts  of  specialized  "food  and  living  serv- 
ices" are  appearing. 

*  A  conference  on  "Group  Living"  held  at  Lake  Placid,  N.  Y.,  i 
May,  1920,  discussed  many  of  these  matters. 

117 


in 


ii8       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

Under  these  circumstances,  so-called  home  economics  and 
household  arts  workers  assume  a  position  of  new  and  large 
importance,  and  require  a  thorough  professional  training  of 
a  kind  not  yet  fully  available,  although  it  is  being  actively 
considered.  Experts  are  emerging  who  are  specialists  in 
the  many  aspects  of  improved  living  conditions ;  and  the  pro- 
fessional training  of  to-morrow  must  provide  for  these 
specializations  on  a  sound  common  foundation.  A  profes- 
sion is  developing  with  as  many  subdivisions  as  the  engi- 
neering profession.  Even  the  terms  hitherto  used  are  up 
for  criticism  and  revision.  "Home  economics  worker"  is 
obviously  inadequate,  and  is  compromised  by  old  preju- 
dices; "dietitian"  is  under  fire  as  too  loosely  used  and  too 
narrow  in  its  proper  sense;  "visiting  housekeeper"  is  repu- 
diated as  failing  to  distinguish  the  professional  from  the 
non-professional  worker.  "Nutrition  worker,"  "food  ex- 
pert," and  "living  conditions  expert"  appear  to  be  coming 
into  favor;  but  there  is  no  agreement  upon  a  general  term. 
Perhaps  we  shall  be  obliged  to  fall  back  upon  Mrs.  Ellen 
Swallow  Richards's  "euthenics,"  the  science  of  right  living 
or  right  environments,  and  shall  come  to  speak  of  "euthenics 
workers." 

Whatever  their  future  designation,  professional  workers 
upon  problems  of  food  and  living  are  called  upon  to-day  for 
a  broader  knowledge  of  economic  and  social  conditions  and 
a  firmer  grasp  of  business  administration  and  "personnel 
management"  than  they  have  hitherto  possessed.  They 
must  work  in  closer  relations  with  the  nutrition  chemist  and 
other  research  experts.  They  must  know  the  correlations 
of  income  and  health ;  the  food  and  housing  conditions  and 
customs  of  various  racial  and  occupational  groups  in  both 
city  and  country;  the  facilities  for  purchasing  and  saving  of 
these  groups — cooperative  buying,  mail-order  buying,  sav- 
ings banks,  credit  unions,  government  thrift  stamps ;  they 
must  apply  modern  methods  of  budget-making,  cost  ac- 
counting, and  salvaging  to  the  living  requirements  of  various 
income  groups.  And  they  must  have  common  sense  and  a 
knack  of  getting  on  with  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  "folks." 
This  is  a  large  program,  combining  training  in  applied 
science  and  psychology,  social  economics,  and  business  ad- 


FOOD  AND  LIVING  SERVICES  119 

ministration,  and  requiring  constant  cooperation  with  doc- 
tors, public  health  nurses,  social  and  civic  workers,  public 
officials,  employers,  employees,  and  public  groups. 

While  all  professional  "home  economics"  workers  are  in- 
directly teachers  of  better  modes  of  living,  they  may  be 
grouped  as  follows:  (i)  Teachers  proper  in  colleges,  schools, 
other  institutions  and  organizations;  (2)  consulting  and 
other  experts  in  budget-making,  nutrition,  textiles,  household 
appHances  and  practices,  under  the  auspices  of  hospitals, 
clinics,  health  centers,  social  and  civic  agencies,  banks,  gov- 
ernment services,  consulting  firms;  (3)  directors  and  man- 
agers of  group  food  and  living  services  on  a  non-commercial 
or  cost  basis:  (a)  residential — colleges,  schools,  hospitals, 
reformatories,  etc.;  (b)  non-residential — lunch-rooms  and 
cafeterias  in  day  schools,  Christian  Associations,  government 
services,  social  organizations,  for  employees  in  factories 
and  commercial  establishments,  for  cooperative  neighbor- 
hood groups;  (4)  directors  and  managers  of  group  food  and 
living  services  on  a  commercial  or  profit-making  basis — 
hotels,  boarding-houses,  clubs,  restaurants,  cafes,  lunch  and 
tea  rooms,  cafeterias,  catering  and  cooked-food  services  ;  (5) 
other  commercial  workers — advertising  workers,  sales  and 
demonstration  managers,  purchasing  agents,  buyers,  mer- 
chandise managers;  (6)  journalists,  editors,  and  publicity 
workers  on  newspapers,  magazines,  trade  journals,  house 
organs;  (7)  research  workers,  investigators,  information 
workers.^ 

Teachers  are  still  the  most  numerous  group  of  workers  in 
the  "home  economics"  field,  and  those  with  thorough  train- 
ing of  the  modern  type  are  in  great  demand.  The  Federal 
Board  for  Vocational  Education  exists  partly  to  further 
preparation  in  this  subject,  and  cooperates  with  directors  of 
teacher  training  and  supervisors  appointed  in  practically 
every  state.    Public  schools — elementary,  secondary,  and  vo- 

*For  a  detailed  study  of  women  in  this  field  see  Opportunities  for 
Women  in  Domestic  Science.  Vocations  for  the  Trained  IVoman. 
Part  3.  (1916).  For  more  recent  information,  see  Melissa  F.  Sny- 
der. Possibilities  in  Home  Economics  Work.  American _  Journal 
of  Home  Economics.  April,  1920.  This  is  based  on  an  inquiry  made 
by  the  Office  of  Home  Economics  of  the  U.  S.  Department  of  Agri- 
culture. 


120       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

cational — offer  the  largest  number  of  opportunities,  although 
there  are  also  positions  in  private  schools.  In  high  schools, 
teachers  of  home  economics  frequently  manage  the  cafeteria 
or  lunch-room,  which  also  provides  practice  work  for  stu- 
dents. Universities,  colleges,  agricultural  colleges,  higher 
vocational  institutions  of  other  sorts,  and  normal  schools  are 
broadening  the  scope  of  instruction  along  these  lines,  and 
are  looking  for  teachers  of  the  highest  professional  equip- 
ment, who  can  work  out  successful  programs  of  academic 
training  combined  with  supervised  field  and  practice  work. 
Cooperative  training  arrangements  with  commercial  and 
non-commercial  institutions — hotels,  restaurants,  hospitals, 
colleges,  and  schools — might  well  be  devised  along  lines 
already  laid  down  in  recent  training  for  industrial  and  com- 
mercial management,  retail  selling,  and  the  like.  Closer  rela- 
tions between  schools  of  home  economics  and  schools  of 
business  administration  are  greatly  needed.  Teachers  are 
required  for  classes  under  the  auspices  of  social  settlements, 
Young  Women's  Christian  Associations,  Girl  Scout  troops, 
and  other  social  and  civic  agencies.  Some  experience  in 
teaching  is  a  valuable  asset  for  every  worker  in  this  field. 
For  those  who  are  really  qualified,  teaching  has  never 
offered  so  fine  an  opportunity  for  constructive  service  in 
many  directions. 

Consulting  experts  and  field  agents  are  a  group  of  work- 
ers in  food  and  living  services  practically  developed  during 
the  war.  The  activities  of  the  county  home  demonstration 
agents  of  the  States  Relations  Service  of  the  Department 
of  Agriculture  have  already  been  described.  But  every- 
where there  is  a  new  realization  of  the  intimate  relations 
between  nutrition,  health,  social  welfare,  and  thrift.  Home 
economics  workers,  social  workers,  and  public  health  nurses 
are  attacking  their  problems  in  cooperation.  Plans  for 
health  centers  include  the  establishment  of  nutrition  clinics 
and  food  and  household  information  services.  An  associa- 
tion has  been  formed  in  Boston  for  organizing  nutrition 
clinics  for  delicate  children.  A  Dietetic  Bureau  has  been 
established  in  the  same  city.  Brookline,  Massachusetts,  has 
a  town  dietitian.  The  first  bulletin  of  the  federal  Children's 
Bureau's  "Children's  Year  Follow-up   Series"  is  entitled: 


FOOD  AND  LIVING  SERVICES  121 

"What  Is  Malnutrition?"  The  Social  Work  Committee  of 
the  American  Home  Economics  Association  formulated  in 
1919  a  statement  of  the  relations  between  home  economics 
and  social  work,  recommending  some  home  economics  in- 
struction in  schools  of  social  work;  home  economics  staff 
experts  and  family  case  workers  or  visitors  in  social  case 
work  agencies;  the  extension  of  group  instruction  in  home- 
making  adjustments  through  home  demonstration  agents  and 
schools ;  and  the  establishment  of  a  larger  number  of  cen- 
ters for  home  economics  advising  in  matters  of  budget,  diet, 
clothing,  and  so  on.  At  the  second  annual  meeting  in  Sep- 
tember, 1919,  of  the  American  Dietetic  Association,  pro- 
posals were  drawn  up  for  social  service  dietitians  for  com- 
munity and  public  health  work  and  for  medical  social 
service  dietitians  to  cooperate  with  medical  social  workers 
in  the  dietary  care  of  out-patients  or  patients  just  discharged 
from  hospitals.  It  was  suggested  that  training  programs  be; 
developed  jointly  by  schools  of  home  economics,  schools  of 
social  work,  and  hospitals,  with  provision  for  adequate  prac- 
tice work.  The  Cahfornia  Home  Teacher  Act  of  191 5  pro- 
vides for  a  home  economics  visiting  instructor  for  non- 
English  speaking  mothers  of  school  children.  Charity  Or- 
ganization Societies  employ  visiting  nutrition,  clothing,  and 
budget  experts,  and  are  advocating  neighborhood  group  in- 
struction rather  than  the  slow  and  costly  method  of  instruct- 
ing only  individual  families.^  It  is  coming  to  be  seen  that 
expert  food  and  living  services  of  this  character  should  not 
be  limite'd  to  families  and  neighborhoods  of  depressed 
economic  standards  or  to  the  cases  of  any  one  society,  but 
should  be  available  for  all  members  of  a  community  and  so 
organized  on  an  independent  or  public  basis.  This  is  one  of 
the  great  merits  of  the  States  Relations  Service.  Visiting 
nurse  associations,  dispensaries  and  clinics  find  many  ad- 
vantages in  charging  small  fees  for  their  services,  waiving 
them    when    necessary.^      Food    and    living    visitors    and 

^  See  Florence  Nesbitt,  Household  Management  (1918)  ;  Emma  A. 
Winslow,  Budget  Planning  in  Social  Case  Work  (Pamphlet,  1919)  ; 
Chicago    Standard    Budget    for    Dependent    Families     (Pamphlet, 

1919). 

*  See  Michael  M.  Davis  and  Andrew  R.  Warner.  Dispensaries: 
Their  Management  and  Development  (1918),  Chapter  5. 


122"      WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

bureaus  might  well  do  likefwise.  This  is  done  as  yet  only 
by  independent  practitioners  or  firms. 

An  outcome  of  the  liberty  loan  and  thrift  campaigns  of 
the  war  period,  largely  carried  on  through  the  banks,  is 
the  extension  of  the  experiment  first  made  by  the  Cleve- 
land Society  for  Savings  of  employing  a  home  economics 
expert  as  adviser  to  depositors  in  all  matters  of  home  in- 
come, budget,  and  expenditure.  Other  banks  followed  this 
example;  and  the  United  States  Treasury  Department  em- 
ployed some  of  the  leading  workers  in  the  field  in  or- 
ganizing its  savings  campaign.  The  New  England  District 
of  the  Federal  Reserve  Bank  has  organized  a  staff  of  home- 
economics  consultants.  The  savings  bank  section  of  the 
American  Bankers'  Association  recently  appointed  a  com- 
mittee on  the  subject,  and  has  issued  the  following  state- 
ment: "The  family  group  as  the  economic  unit  for  saving 
and  thrift,  rather  than  the  individual  depositors  in  the  sav- 
ings banks,  is  the  basis  for  certain  new  phases  of  savings 
banking.  .  .  .  Considerable  experience  is  now  available  in 
savings  banks  of  Cleveland  and  Pittsburgh,  where  calls  for 
information  on  home  economics  are  averaging  over  one  hun- 
dred per  week  in  each  city.  In  Maine  an  expert  is  operating 
under  the  auspices  of  the  State  Chamber  of  Commerce  and 
the  Agricultural  League,  being  at  each  of  the  cooperating 
banks  during  two  days  of  each  month.  .  .  .  Aside  from 
their  strictly  business  features,  the  savings  banks  have  cer- 
tain public  service  aspects  which  now  are  being  emphasized. 
We  may  refe^  to  the  promotion  of  school  savings,  the  de- 
velopment of  savings  systems  in  industrial  plants,  and  the 
further  expansion  of  work  in  home  economics.  ...  It  is  the 
purpose  of  the  savings  banks  section  to  develop  the  work 
in  home  economics  by  its  member  institutions,  both  active 
and  associate.  The  section  has  the  assurance  of  hearty  co- 
operation from  all  parts  of  the  country."  The  social  bear- 
ings of  this  work,  especially  with  aliens,  is  obvious. 

Another  large  group  of  women  are  concerned  with  the 
direction  of  food  and  living  sen^ices  in  public  or  semi-public 
institutions  of  a  non-commercial  type, — universities,  col- 
leges, and  schools;  hospitals  and  sanitariums;  institutions 
for  delinquents,  dependents,  and  defectives.    They  are  called 


FOOD  AND  LIVING  SERVICES  123 

institutional  managers,  housekeepers,  or  matrons.  Their 
work  commonly  involves  the  hiring  and  direction  of  house- 
hold staffs;  the  supervision  and  distribution  of  supplies,  fre- 
quently the  purchasing  of  such  supplies;  accounting;  plan- 
ning of  meals ;  and  similar  services.  Such  positions  vary 
from  those  requiring  a  high  type  of  professional  equipment 
to  those  v^here  personal  and  social  qualities  are  considered 
of  major  importance,  or  where  practical  experience  in  man- 
aging a  household  is  all  that  is  necessary.  This  lack  of 
standardization  means  frequent  lack  of  professional  recog- 
nition and  professional  group  spirit. 

In  the  eastern  colleges  for  women,  posts  as  heads  of  resi- 
dence halls  depend  for  the  most  part  upon  personal  and 
educational  qualifications  rather  than  upon  training ;  and  are 
not  professional  home-economics  positions.  There  is  an  op- 
portunity for  the  residential  colleges  to  study  more  system- 
atically than  has  yet  been  done  the  educational  and  health 
bearings  of  their  living  arrangements  and  to  appoint  as 
director  of  living  conditions  a  professional  woman  of  the 
highest  type  who  should  rank  as  a  member  of  the  faculty 
and  should  cooperate  actively  with  the  departments  of 
health,  economics,  and  the  sciences,  preferably  giving  some 
instruction  or  supervising  practice  work.  Perhaps  some 
alumnae  association  or  graduate  will  endow  such  a  post. 
The  idea  has  been  discussed  in  various  quarters,  and  cer- 
tain institutions  are  approximating  it  in  practice.  The 
twelve  government  residence  halls  for  women  workers  in 
Washington,  completed  since  the'  close  of  the  war  and  filled 
to  capacity,  are  a  striking  example  of  modern  planning  and 
operation.^  Teachers  College  of  Columbia  University  has 
under  consideration  the  establishment  of  a  Bureau  of  In- 
stitution Research  similar  to  the  Harvard  Bureau  of  Busi- 
ness Research.^  A  bureau  of  consultation  for  hospitals  and 
other  institutions  has  been  organized  in  New  York  City 
by  an  expert  in  this  field. 

A  recognized  group  of  home  economics  workers  are  the 
dietitians,  trained  in  the  food  modifications  necessary  in  ill- 

^  Monthly  Labor  Review.     October,  1919.    Report  U.  S.  Housing 
Corporation,  Vol.  II  (1919). 
'  Teachers  College  Bulletin.    December,  1919. 


124       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

ness  of  different  kinds,  at  different  ages,  and  under  any  spe- 
cial organic  conditions.  Hitherto,  they  have  been  most  com- 
monly attached  to  hospitals  or  to  institutions  under  medical 
supervision.  Many  hospitals  receive  women  with  home 
economics  training  as  pupil  dietitians  for  a  three  months' 
course,  furnishing  living  and  sometimes  an  apprentice  wage. 
Hospital  dietitians  direct  the  preparation  of  special  diets 
ordered  by  physicians  in  charge  of  patients,  and  often  con- 
duct classes  for  pupil  nurses  in  elementary  dietetics  and 
dietetic  cooking,  using  the  hospital  diet  kitchen  as  a  labora- 
tory. At  present,  the  equipment  and  professional  status 
of  dietitians  are  unstandardized  and  unsatisfactory;  and 
the  line  between  them  and  institutional  managers  is  often 
hard  to  draw.  Their  duties  are  not  infrequently  limited 
to  the  routine  preparing  of  menus  for  the  entire  hospital 
population.  With  the  establishment  of  health  and  nutrition 
centers  and  other  consulting  food  services,  they  are  begin- 
ning to  receive  more  definite  and  adequate  professional 
training  as  nutrition  workers.  Instruction  in  the  elements 
of  dietetics  and  of  the  chemistry  of  food  and  nutrition  is, 
indeed,  an  essential  part  of  all  professional  preparation  in 
"home  economics,"  and  must  make  constantly  available 
in  practice  the  conclusions  of  research  workers  in  these 
fields. 

Quantity- feeding  undertakings  during  the  war,  both  in 
canteen  services  overseas  and  in  governmental,  industrial, 
and  social  organizations  in  this  country,  have  given  a  com- 
mand of  new  techniques  in  group  feeding  and  a  grasp  of 
its  problems  which  are  standing  us  in  good  stead  in  these 
days  of  high  costs  and  the  practical  disappearance  of 
domestic  service  of  the  old  type.  The  enforcement  of  pro- 
hibition creates  a  demand  for  attention  on  a  national  scale 
to  problems  of  better  food  and  nutrition  as  well  as  to  prob- 
lems of  recreation.  It  enlists  commercial  purveyors  of 
food — hotels,  restaurants,  cafes — as  never  before  the  side  of 
improved  methods  of  preparing  and  serving  food.  We  are 
entering  upon  a  new  period  in  food  and  living  services, 
and  satisfactory  results  will  be  attained  only  through  the 
combined  efforts  of  scientific,  business,  and  social  experts. 
Even  the  "new  psychologists"  will  have  a  hand,  since  do- 


FOOD  AND  LIVING  SERVICES  125 

mestic  "folkways"  are  among  the  most  stubborn  and  diffi- 
cult to  alter. 

Cafeteria  service,  originating  in  the  west,  has  won  uni- 
versal acceptance,  and  its  techniques  are  being  constantly 
improved  Young  Women's  Christian  Associations  ^  through- 
out the  country  were  pioneers  in  its  adoption,  and  provide 
institutes  and  training  courses  for  their  cafeteria  managers. 
Everywhere  industrial  firms  are  introducing  cafeterias  for 
workers  in  their  plants  and  offices ;  and  department  stores, 
insurance  and  public  utility  companies,  banks,  and  other 
large  corporations  are  doing  likewise.  The  great  Statler 
hotels  from  New  York  to  Saint  Louis  are  establishing  this 
service  for  their  employees  under  the  direction  of  pro- 
fessionally trained  women. 

A  pressing  group  of  problems  is  connected  with  the  pro- 
vision of  satisfactory  food  and  living  service  in  individual 
city  families,  formerly  supplied  with  domestic  servants 
and  invincibly  attached  to  meals  at  home.  Although  the 
costs  of  commodities  and  labor  will  undoubtedly  become 
more  stable,  there  seems  little  likelihood  that  the  family 
formerly  employing  one  or  two  servants  will  be  able  to  re- 
turn to  its  old  mode  of  living.  In  large  and  expensive 
establishments  the  change  is  less  marked,  although  they 
will  probably  be  administered  more  scientifically.  City 
homes  at  a  lower  income  level  furnish  the  even  more  diffi- 
cult problem  of  a  better  household  food  service  than  that 
afforded  by  the  corner  grocery  and  the  neighborhood  deli- 
catessen shop.  Various  efforts  have  been  made  to  establish 
satisfactory  cooked-food  services  both  at  cost  and  at  a  profit ; 
but  they  are  still  experimental  and  only  partially  successful. 

The  solution  appears  to  be  along  the  lines  of  neighbor- 
hood service  stations  adapted  to  various  types  of  com- 
munity, with  provision  for  serving  meals  on  the  spot  and 
also  for  sending  them  out  to  families  within  a  limited 
area.  Such  a  station  might  also  supply  workers  by  the  day 
or  by  the  hour  or  job,  rotating  on  a  circuit  of  households, 
as  laundresses,  cleaning  women,  and  furnace-men  now  do. 
It  might  be  equipped  with  laundiy,  vacuum  cleaners,  and 

'In  1920-1921  they  maintained  256  cafeterias,  and  employed  317 
trained  workers. 


126       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

other  renovating  facilities;  and  provide  rooms,  cafeteria 
meals,  and  training  courses  for  workers  who  desired  them. 
The  plan  of  "home  assistants,"  ^  who  shall  have  meals  and 
rooms  outside  of  the  employer's  house,  and  be  paid  on  the 
basis  of  an  eight-hour  day  and  a  forty-four  hour  week, 
is  a  step  in  this  direction,  and  needs  some  such  center 
for  its  proper  operation.  A  service-station  of  this  sort 
would  require  thoroughly  enlightened  and  professional  man- 
agement. In  the  meantime,  women  of  moderate  income  and 
average  education  wlio  have  been  accustomed  to  keep  house 
with  servants  but  are  now  obliged  to  do  their  own  work 
need  the  services  of  professional  consultants  and  reorganiza- 
tion and  simplification  of  their  household  procedures  quite 
as  much  as  do  women  of  lower  incomes. 

An  American  Cooked  Food  Service,  delivering  complete 
hot  meals  in  containers  to  individual  families,  has  been 
tried  out  in  several  cities,  but  seems  unable  to  meet  the 
difficulty  that  people  all  want  their  meals  at  the  same  time, 
making  the  cost  of  delivery  prohibitive.  Other  towns  and 
cities  are  experimenting  with  community  kitchens  and 
dining-rooms,  each  family  providing  its  own  table  furnish- 
ings. Some  of  these  have  been  in  successful  operation  for 
a  number  of  years.  A  valuable  bulletin  entitled  Agencies 
for  the  Sale  of  Cooked  Food's  imthout  Profit  was  issued 
by  the  government  in  1919.^  It  describes  undertakings  of 
this  sort  in  Europe  and  the  United  States,  and  pays  tribute 
to  the  pioneer  work,  of  the  New  England  Kitchen  and  the 
Women's-  Educational  and  Industrial  Union. 

The  household  difficulties  of  this  period  of  readjustment, 
the  restlessness  engendered  by  the  war,  and  the  growing 
buik  of  travel  are  leading  to  a  notable  increase  in  apartment 
house  and  hotel  life  and  to  the  presence  of  large  numbers 
of  transient  or  unattached  persons  in  every  urban  center. 
Commercial  provisions  for  this  state  of  affairs — hotels, 
restaurants,  lunch  rooms — are  developing  by  leaps  and 
bounds.    Great  hotel  systems  are  being  established.    Chain 

*  See  pamphlet  The  Homfe  Assistant  Central  Branch  Y.  W.  C.  A. 
(1920). 

'  Iva  Li  Peters.  Department  of  Food  Production  and  Home  Eco- 
nomics.    Women's  Committee,  Council  of  National  Defense. 


FOOD  AND  LIVING  SERVICES  127 

restaurants  are  as  common  as  chain  stores.  A  great  special- 
ized business  of  selling  food  and  giving  services  is  arising, 
and  is  bound  to  become  as  standardized  and  efficient  as 
any  other  type  of  industrial  or  commercial  ejnterprise. 
Hitherto,  however,  the  great  hotel  interests  have  been  rather 
notably  conservative  in  certain  aspects  of  management.  They 
are  still  far  behind  the  more  progressive  industries  with 
respect  to  organizing  modern  personnel  departments,  re- 
search bureaus,  and  systems  of  apprenticeship  and  promo- 
tion for  young  professional  men  and  women  who  are  look- 
ing forward  to  managerial  positions  and  wish  to  learn  the 
hotel  business  from  the  bottom  up.  They  retain  a  lingering 
suspicion  of  college  trained  men,  and  are  still  skeptical  and 
surprised  at  the  suggestion  of  employing  college  trained 
women.  Rumor  has  it,  however,  that  certain  hotel  interests 
favor  the  expansion  of  the  Department  of  Home  Economics 
at  Cornell  University  into  a  School  of  Home  Economics, 
coordinate  with  the  School  of  Agriculture.  At  least  one 
large  hotel  in  New  York  employs  a  scientifically  trained 
woman  as  food  and  storage  inspector,  and  has  supplied  her 
with  a  laboratory.  It  has  a  special  women's  floor  managed 
by  a  woman  with  a  professional  conception  of  hotel  service. 
The  Statler  group  of  hotels  are  employing  professional 
women  to  manage  their  food  service  for  employees;  and 
are  enthusiastic  over  the  results.  Another  large  New  York 
group  has  had  a  woman  employment  manager.  A  woman 
is  buyer  for  the  candy  stores  of  another  group;  and  the 
manager  thinks  women  would  be  successful  in  other  kinds 
of  hotel  buying.  A  woman  is  traveling  auditor  for  a  group 
of  hotel  restaurants.  Another  assists  in  the  publicity  and 
promotion  department,  and  edits  a  daily  sheet  of  hotel  news. 
In  fact,  women  are  not  infrequently  employed  in  this  type 
of  hotel  work.  In  the  housekeeping  departments,  profes- 
sional women  are  seldom  found,  those  in  managerial  posi- 
tions commonly  rising  from  the  ranks.  A  manager  received 
with  interest  the  suggestion  that  an  expert  in  textiles  would 
be  of  value.  While  professional  women  here  and  there  are 
successfully  managing  summer  hotels  and  small  residential 
or  apartment  hotels,  the  large  modern  city  hotel  is  still 
practically  unexplored  territory.    But  all  signs  point  to  its 


128       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

occupation  in  the  near  future,  if  women  will  be  prepared 
to  learn  the  business  as  men  learn  it. 

Women  are  already  successfully  managing  restaurants 
and  lunch  rooms  for  customers  in  department  stores.  The 
New  York  Times  recently  carried  an  advertisement  for  a 
woman  manager  at  a  salary  of  at  least  $5,000  for  an  out 
of  town  store.  A  woman  is  manager  of  a  well-known  res- 
taurant for  men  in  the  financial  district  in  New  York,  and 
a  college  woman  has  owned  and  operated  one  successfully 
in  Boston.  Women  have  carried  on  large  catering  estab- 
lishments, and  they  have  run  innumerable  lunch  and  tea 
rooms,  some  of  them  professionally*  managed.  The  food 
shop  and  lunch  rooms  of  the  Women's  Educational  and 
Industrial  Union  in  Boston  have  long  demonstrated  that 
such  enterprises  may  be  both  scientifically  and  profitably 
conducted. 

A  commercial  field  calhng  for  women  trained  in  "home 
economics"  is  the  advertising  and  wholesale  selHng  of  food 
products  and  household  goods  and  appliances.  Some  of 
the  large  packing  companies  and  other  food  manufacturers 
maintain  "domestic  science"  departments  in  charge  of  ex- 
perts who  conduct  information  services,  issue  booklets  of 
recipes  and  instructions,  carry  on  correspondence  courses, 
and  direct  demonstration  sales-agents.  A  recent  example 
is  the  California  Packing  Corporation,  which  announces  the 
establishment  of  the  "Del  Monte  Domestic  Science  Depart- 
ment" with  a  series  of  lesson  leaflets  for  the  use  of  schools. 
Women  played  a  considerable  part  in  the  famous  "battle  of 
the  baking-powders."  Producers  of  household  goods  and 
textiles  are  inaugurating  similar  advertising  services.  Pro- 
fessional women  have  not  hitherto  gone  to  any  extent  into 
"outside  selling,"  but  with  the  growth  of  professional  train- 
ing and  standards  in  salesmanship  it  offers  an  opportunity 
to  those  with  business  aptitude  and  acquaintance  with  both 
the  manufacturing  and  the  consuming  ends  of  food  and 
household  products.  A  woman  familiar  through  long  resi- 
dence in  China  with  certain  fibers  found  only  in  that  countr}' 
was  recently  employed  at  a  high  salary  by  an  importing 
house  to  sell  this  product  to  manufacturers. 

There  is  also  an  undeveloped  field  for  women  in  whole- 


FOOD  AND  LIVING  SERVICES  129 

sale  buying.  Professional  women  with  training  and  experi- 
ence along  these  lines  may  before  long  find  an  opportunity 
to  combine  their  business  and  social  interests  in  the  em- 
ployment of  the  cooperative  societies  which  are  so  rapidly 
developing  in  this  country. 

Another  form  of  commercial  "home  economics"  work  is 
found  in  journalistic  or  editorial  positions  with  household 
magazines,  household  departments  in  newspapers,  or  ap- 
propriate trade  journals.  The  food  and  thrift  campaigns 
of  the  war  greatly  stimulated  the  demand  for  authentic 
information.  Some  of  this  work  is  done  as  "special  writ- 
ing" on  a  space  basis  rather  than  on  a  salary.  It  pays 
well.  The  editors  of  certain  "women's  magazines"  are 
among  the  most  highly  paid  professional  women. 

Investigation  of  conditions  afifecting  standards  of  food 
and  living  and  research  into  their  problems  are  carried  on 
by  the  Department  of  Agriculture,  and  to  some  extent  by 
the  Federal  Board  for  Vocational  Education.  On  the  eco- 
nomic side,  the  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics  makes  an  im- 
portant contribution  through  its  cost  of  living  and  wage 
studies  and  through  its  monthly  index  numbers  of  the  prices 
of  food  and  other  household  commodities.  Its  recent  min- 
imal budgets  for  government  clerical  workers,  meager  as  they 
are,  are  practically  the  only  non-industrial  budgets  avail- 
able,^ and  furnish  a  useful  basis  of  comparison  in  the  process 
of  revising  clerical  and  professional  salaries,  now  going  on 
everywhere.  The  new  Minimum  Wage  Board  of  the  Dis- 
trict of  Columbia  has  also  made  an  important  and  much 
needed  study  of  the  wages  of  hotel  workers,  in  Washing- 
ton, and  has  established  a  minimum  living  wage  with  a 
money  equivalent  for  room  and  meals.-  State  minimum 
wage  boards  and  state  departments  of  labor  are  making 
similar  useful  studies.     Research  is  also  carried  on  by  uni- 

^  Quantity  and  Cost  Budget  Necessary  to  Maintain  a  Family  of 
Five  in  Washington,  D.  C.  Monthly  Labor  Rcviezv.  December, 
1919-  Quantity-Cost  Budget  Necessary  to  Maintain  a  Single  Man 
or  Woman  in  Washington,  D.  C.  Monthly  Labor  Review.  Janu- 
ary, 1920. 

*Qara  E.  Mortenson.  Minimum  Wage  for  IVomcn  in  Hotels 
and  Restaurants  in  the  District  of  Columbia.  Monthly  Labor  Re- 
view.   March,  1920. 


130       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

versities,  agricultural  colleges,  and  experiment  stations;  by 
endowed  nutrition  laboratories;  by  industrial  research 
bureaus.^  In  a  number  of  cities  and  a  few  states  women 
are  serving  as  official  food  and  market  inspectors.  In  some 
cities,  organizations  such  as  women's  city  clubs  and  wo- 
men's municipal  leagues  carry  on  supplementary  or  "follow- 
up"  inspections.  New  York  City  has  a  woman  deputy 
commissioner  of  markets  who  is  a  consultant  in  home 
economies. 

Employment  in  these  many  types  of  food  and  living 
service  is  secured  through  institutions  giving  professional 
training;  through  civil  service  examinations;  through  bu- 
reaus of  occupations ;  through  direct  application  to  health, 
social,  and  civic  agencies,  industrial  and  commercial  firms ; 
sometimes  through  professional  associations  or  journals. 

Sixteen  "home  economics"  workers  filled  our  schedules, 
of  whom  eleven  reported  salaries  ranging  from  $1,200  to 
$4,500,  with  a  median  salary  of  $1,800.-  Twenty  women  in 
charge  of  college  halls  of  residence  also  replied;  but  their 
duties  are  social  and  practical  rather  than  professional. 
Their  salaries  ranged  from  $500  to  $1,300  in  addition  to 
maintenance.  Three  of  the  sixteen  are  teachers.  One  has 
recently  organized  a  home-economics  department  in  a  state 
university,  and  is  in  charge  with  the, rank  of  associate 
professor.  ^  She  is  an  authority  on  textiles.  A  second  is 
instructor  in  textiles  and  clothing  in  another  state  university, 
supervising  laboratory  work  in  the  chemistry  of  textile's. 
A  third  is  teacher  of  science  as  applied  to  home  economics 
in  the  post-graduate  department  of  a  large  private  school 
for  girls.  One  is  superintendent  of  the  dining-service  in  a 
leading  technological  institute  for  men.  Another  is  director 
of  school  luncheons  in  an  organization  supplying  this  service 
to  nineteen  city  high  schools  and  normal  schools.  Two  are 
with  the  Young  Women's  Christian  Association.  Three 
are  in  commercial   food  services,  one  as  manager  of  the 

*  See  Food  of  Working  Women  in  Boston.  Studies  in  Economic 
Relations  of  Women.  Volume  X.  Women's  Educational  and  Indus- 
trial Union.     (19x7.) 

'  See  Melissa  F.  Snyder.  Possibilities  in  Home  Economics  Work. 
Journal  of  Home  Economics.     April,  1920. 


FOOD  AND  LIVING  SERVICES  131 

employees'  lunch-room  in  a  great  department  store ;  another 
as  manager  of  food  service  for  both  customers  and  em- 
ployees in  one  of  the  largest  department  stores  in  the  coun- 
try; a  third  as  manager  of  a  restaurant  in  a  metropolitan 
office  building.  One  is  manager  of  the  food-service  adver- 
tising and  demonstration  department  in  a  great  chemical 
corporation.  Three  are  in  executive  and  research  positions 
in  the  federal  government.  Two  are  consultants  in  home 
economics.  Ten  of  these  women  are  college  graduates  with 
professional  training  in  home  economics ;  three  have  the 
master's  degree ;  others  have  done  graduate  work  in  food 
and  nutrition  chemistry  and  dietetics.  Three  are  gradu- 
ates of  Pratt  Institute.  Several  others  have  had  special 
work  at  Simmons,  Teachers  College,  the  University  of  Chi- 
cago. 

A  teacher  says :  "Get  thorough  science  training  and  lots 
of  economics,  in  both  cases  straight  unmodified  university 
courses.  Specialize  on  top  of  this,  but  not  at  the  sacrifice 
of  either.  I  became  interested  in  home  economics  from  the 
economics  standpoint.  I  have  had  to  feel  my  way.  I  was 
sidetracked  for  several  years  by  the  fact  that  I  attended 

'  College   for  a  year,  and   was  there  told  that  home 

economics  had  no  cultural  value.  It  took  me  some  time 
to  see  its  real  value  again." 

The  director  of  school  lunches  says :  "Get  as  broad  train- 
ing as  possible — science,  economics,  sociology,  specializing 
the  last  two  years  in  home  economics  and  making  the  most 
of  every  opportunity  in  practical  work.  Be  willing  to 
take  a  position  with  small  salary  at  first,  if  in  a  well-man- 
aged organization." 

A  graduate  in  home  economics  in  charge  of  a  depart- 
ment store  lunch-room  says :  "Get  a  little  practical  experi- 
ence before  you  begin  to  study.  I  wish  I  had  had  far 
more  practice  work  even  at  the  expense  of  theory." 

The  manager  of  an  institutional  dining-service  says : 
"Train  well  ip  business  and  financial  details  and  in  organiza- 
tion. Dietetics  is  secondary.  You  need  an  understanding 
of  general  economic  conditions,  of  how  to  handle  human 
nature,  tact,  impartiality,  firmness." 

The  manager  of  the  food  department  in  a  manufacturing 


132      WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

corporation  says :  "Do  not  ask  favors.  Do  work  in  which 
you  are  interested  conscientiously.  See  where  you  can 
help  the  whole  organization  by  putting  aside  personalities 
...  I  employ  and  direct  women  for  advertising  and  sales 
work ;  edit  booklets,  recipes,  advertising  copy,  and  so  forth ; 
go  on  diplomatic  missions  to  various  cities  and  people,  etc., 
etc." 

An  editorial  and  administrative  worker  in  the  Depart- 
ment of  Agriculture  says :  "In  my  opinion  the  next  most 
important  developments  in  research  along  lines  of  home 
economics  will  be  in  the  general  economics  of  consumption 
and  the  chemistry  and  physics  of  the  materials  used  in 
clothing  and  household  equipment.  At  the  same  time  posi- 
tions in  institutional  management  dietetics  and  the  commer- 
cial preparation  of  food  will  increase  in  number  and  in 
the  amount  of  salary  paid.  Home  economics  advisers  for 
banks,  industrial  and  social-welfare  organizations  may  also 
become  more  numerous." 

Another  federal  executive  says :  "Specialized  positions 
such  as  mine  need  technical  home  economics  training  com- 
bined with  teaching  experience  and  executive  and  adminis- 
trative ability.  I  make  recommendations  to  the  chief  of 
the  division  as  to  matters  of  principle  and  policy  involved 
in  carrying  out  the  work  of  home  economics  education 
throughout  the  states.  I  prepare  matter  for  consideration 
by  the  staff  conferences,  and  work  out  with  the  federal 
agents  plans  for  the  work  of  the  agents  in  the  field  and 
at  the  home  office.  I  find  the  most  helpful  thing  in  my 
professional  training  the  research  work  which  developed 
the  initiative  to  work  independently  at  a  problem." 


CHAPTER  VIII 

COMMUNITY,  CIVIC,  AND  GOVERNMENT  SERVICES 

During  the  war  practically  all  communities  in  the  United 
States  developed  a  new  civic  consciousness  and  new  civic 
resources  and  techniques.  They  took  stock  of  themselves 
with  respect  to  their  men  of  draft  age,  their  remaining  labor- 
supply,  their  industrial  or  agricultural  production,  their 
food,  their  health,  their  contributions  to  war  loans  and 
war  "drives"  of  various  kinds.  Through  systems  of  quotas, 
percentages,  and  zones,  they  learned  to  compare  themselves 
with  other  communities  and  other  sections  of  the  country. 
They  became  units  of  national  organizations  through  Red 
Cross  chapters,  community  councils,  community  labor- 
boards  of  the  United  States  Employment  Service,  local 
undertakings  of  the  War-Camp  Community  Service. 
They  looked  with  new  eyes  upon  existing  local  provisions 
for  community  betterment,  devised  plans  for  their  closer 
cooperation,  and  raised  "war-chests"  for  their  support. 
Much  of  this  activity  was  spontaneous ;  but  much  of  it 
was  instigated  from  above,  and  there  was  undoubtedly  an 
excess  of  hastily  organized  "supervision." 

Natural  reactions  from  high-tension  effort  and  an  all  too 
effective  publicity  must  not  bHnd  us  to  the  solid  and  per- 
manent gains  from  the  war  period.  Communities  have 
learned  to  take  a  cross-section  view  of  their  interests  and 
activities,  to  work  out  programs  for  joint  action,  to  call 
upon  federal  and  national  agencies  for  information  and 
advice  and  upon  experts  of  various  kinds  for  practical 
leadership.  They  have  come  to  recognize  that  social  and 
economic  maladjustments  are  not  the  exclusive  concern  of 
a  group  of  people  known  as  "social  workers,"  to  be  dealt 
with  through  private  or  public  philanthropy,  but  the  con- 
cern and  responsibility  of  citizens  as  a  whole. 

Active   interest   in   community   and   civic   matters   is   by 

133 


134        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

no  means  altogether  a  product  of  the  war.  For  a  number 
of  years  there  have  been  associations  of  citizens  concerned 
with  one  aspect  or  another  of  local  public  welfare — better 
local  government,  better  schools,  better  housing,  industrial 
and  commercial  development,  improved  city  planning,  more 
parks  and  playgrounds,  higher  standards  of  commercial 
recreation.  Civic  federations,  city  clubs,  municipal  leagues, 
citizen's  unions,  chambers  of  commerce,  boards  of  trade, 
public  education  associations,  and  so  on,  have  devoted  them- 
selves to  one  or  more  of  these  causes ;  have  prodded  and 
exposed  slothful,  ignorant,  or  dishonest  city  governments, 
supported  demonstrations  of  better  methods,  backed  pro- 
gressive city  ordinances  and  state  laws,  and  seen  to  it  that 
they  were  enforced.  In  general,  they  have  been,  perhaps, 
more  ready  to  work  for  the  community  than  with  and 
tlirough  the  community ;  and  have  been  made  up  for  the 
most  part  of  leading  citizens  in  business  and  the  professions 
and  of  women  of  leisure  and  public  spirit.  The  work  of 
their  voluntary  committees  has  been  increasingly  directed 
by  professional  executive  secretaries,  and  they  have  fre- 
quently employed  experts  to  make  surveys  and  prepare 
reports. 

Another  type  of  community  action  is  to  be  found  in  the 
federations  of  social  agencies  which  have  been  established 
to  provide  opportunities  for  conference  among  different 
groups  of  workers  and  to  encourage  a  comprehensive  rather 
than  a  piecemeal  attack  upon  local  social  problems.  Some 
of  these  federations,  as  in  Cleveland,  began  before  the  war 
to  raise  a  single  fund  for  all  social  purposes,  and  thus  fur- 
nished a  model  for  the  war-chests  and  community  chests 
that  are  now  so  prevalent.  Such  federations  have  edu- 
cated social  workers  in  the  community  aspects  and  bear- 
ings of  their  own  problems ;  have  brought  home  to  the  com- 
munity as  a  whole  its  social  assets  and  liabilities ;  and 
have  furthered  mutual  understanding  between  the  business 
and  the  humanitarian  groups.  Central  councils  of  social 
agencies,  undertaking  administration,  are  rarer,  and  less 
universally  approved.^ 

^  See  Francis  H.  McLean.  The  Central  Council  of  Social  Agen- 
cies (Pamphlet,  1920). 


CIVIC  AND  GOVERNMENT  SERVICES      135 

In  all  movements  for  civic  betterment  women  have  played 
an  active  part,  at  first  through  women's  clubs  and  more 
recently  through  women's  municipal  leagues,  women's  city 
clubs,  and  the  like.  Many  of  these  organizations  have  sal- 
aried civic  secretaries.  The  long  struggle  for  the  franchise 
has  been  an  invaluable  education  to  women  in  public  poli- 
cies and  procedures ;  and  local  suffrage  organizations  have 
identified  themselves  with  enlightened  civic  movements  and 
enlightened  state  legislation.  Through  their  work  for 
suffrage,  women  have  learned  the  advantages  of  efficient 
organization,  of  concentration  upon  definite  programs,  and 
of  persistence  in  campaigns  of  education  and  publicity  in 
spite  of  rebuffs  and  discouragement.  A  large  body  of 
women,  many  of  them  in  active  professional  Hfe,  enter 
upon  full  citizenship  with  valuable  experience  in  dealing 
with  legislatures  and  public  officials  and  with  a  unique 
insight  into  the  workings  of  the  two  main  political  parties. 
The  new  element  in  the  electorate  is  already  providing  for 
its  own  further  education — and  that  of  others — through 
state  and  national  Leagues  of  Women  Voters,  and  promises 
a  substantial  contribution  of  fresh  thinking  and  uncom- 
mitted action  to  the  work  of  political  reorganization  now 
facing  the  country. 

In  political  matters  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  men  and  women 
will  learn  as  soon  as  possible  to  work  together  as  citizens. 
But  it  must  be  admitted  that  for  the  present  women  form  a 
distinct  and  in  large  measure  politically  inexperienced  group. 
No  other  large  body  of  voters  contains  so  many  members 
who  are  not  "gainfully  employed."  Professional  women 
with  understanding  of  political  principles  and  practices  and 
their  bearing  upon  civic  welfare  and  progress,  and  with  an 
ability  to  secure  the  cooperation  of  various  groups,  are 
already  in  demand  as  political  organizers  and  campaign 
managers,  directors  of  political  education,  research  and 
publicity  workers  in  the  political  field.  They  are  working 
in  connection  with  political  parties,  old  and  new,  and  with 
men  as  well  as  with  women  voters.  Such  women  require 
special  preparation  through  courses  in  political  science  and 
government  and  through  field  training  and  experience  with 
civic  and  political  organizations.     Some  of  the  Leagues  of 


136       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

Women  Voters  are  providing  intensive  courses  for  leaders. 
As  yet,  this  sort  of  work  grows  out  of  other  professional 
experience,  and  hardly  offers  the  prospect  of  an  independent 
professional  career. 

Professional  women,  however,  need  to  face  their  new 
political  opportunities  and  obligations  more  fully  than  they 
have  sometimes  faced  their  civic  responsibilities  in  the  past. 
They  have  not  infrequently  been  so  much  engrossed  in 
their  own  work  and  in  establishing  their  own  professional 
status  that  they  have  left  the  direction  of  these  matters 
to  untrained  women  and  then  have  wondered  why  they 
were  carried  on  so  ineffectually.  They  should  not  only 
occupy  the  paid  executive  and  expert  posts  just  described, 
but  should  actively  seek  positions,  paid  and  unpaid,  on 
public  boards  and  commissions,  and  should  stand  as  can- 
didates for  public  office.  In  the  equal  suffrage  states  of  the 
west,  women  have  already  been  elected  to  various  positions. 
The  offices  of  state  and  county  superintendent  of  schools 
seem  tO'  be  especially  reserved  for  them;  and  they  have 
served  as  members  of  state  legislatures,  as  justices  of 
the  peace,  overseers  of  the  poor,  and  so  on.  But  in  the 
future  women  throughout  the  country  will  undoubtedly  hold 
a  much  wider  range  of  offices,  and  will  seek  election  to  city 
councils,  state  legislatures,  and  the  Congress  of  the  United 
States,  of  which  two  women  have  already  been  members. 
The  next  few  years  will  see  an  unprecedented  body  of  social 
and  economic  legislation,  and  the  views  of  enlightened 
women  will  be  needed  in  the  shaping  of  laws  dealing  with 
human  relations  and  human  satisfactions. 

In  both  suffrage  and  non-suffrage  states  women  have  to 
?ome  extent  served  on  state  boards  of  education,  health, 
charities,  labor  and  industries.  They  have  been  more  fre- 
quently appointed  to  the  newer  industrial  and  welfare  com- 
missions, minimum  wage  boards,  bureaus  of  women  and 
children  in  industry,  and  the  like.  The  Department  of 
Labor  lists  thirty-three  women  who  are  members  or  paid 
executives  of  state  or  federal  industrial  and  labor  services. 
Women  are  executive  secretaries  or  directors  of  five  west- 
ern industrial  welfare  commissions;  of  at  least  three  mini- 
mum wage  boards;  of  eleven  departments  concerned  with 


CIVIC  AND  GOVERNMENT  SERVICES      137 

women  and  children.  The  chief  industrial  statisticians  in 
New  Jersey  and  Wisconsin  are  women.  Three  women 
head  federal  services — Miss  Julia  Lathrop,  chief  of  the 
Children's  Bureau,  Miss  Mary  Anderson,  director  of  the 
new  Women's  Bureau,  both  in  the  Department  of  Labor; 
Mrs.  Frances  Axtell,  chairman  of  the  United  States  Em- 
ployees' Compensation  Commission.  A  newspaper  woman, 
Mrs.  Helen  Gardener,  has  recently  been  appointed  as  one 
of  the  three  Civil  Service  Commissioners.  A  woman  law- 
yer is  an  assistant  attorney  general.  Since  given  the  vote 
in  1 91 7,  New  York  women  have  been  appointed  to  a  num- 
ber of  important  state  and  city  posts.  Miss  Frances 
Perkins,  an  experienced  industrial  investigator,  is  a  mem- 
ber of  the  State  Industrial  Commission  at  a  salary  of  $8,000. 
A  former  executive  secretary  of  the  Consumers'  League  is 
chief  of  the  bureau  of  Women  in  Industry  of  this  com- 
mission. There  are  three  women  on  the  state  board  of 
charities.  But  as  yet  there  is  no  woman  among  the  twelve 
regents  of  the  University  of  the  State  of  New  York,  form- 
ing the  state  board  of  education.  New  York  City  has  two 
women  on  its  reduced  board  of  education  of  seven  mem- 
bers, women  deputy  commissioners  of  police  and  markets, 
a  woman  city  magistrate,  a  woman  assistant  district  attor- 
ney. These  are  all  political  appointments  of  the  present 
mayor.  In  Mayor  Mitchel's  administration,  New  York  had 
its  first  woman  head  of  a  city  department  in  the  person  of 
Dr.  Katharine  B.  Davis,  who  was  commissioner  of  correc- 
tions.   Denver  has  had  a  woman  commissioner  of  charities. 

Everywhere  qualified  women  should  serve  more  com- 
monly on  administrative  boards,  especially  on  school  boards, 
library  boards,  hospital  boards.  They  should  be  members 
of  workmen's  compensation  and  health  insurance  commis- 
sions, of  boards  of  inquiry  and  adjustment,  of  advisory 
boards  in  any  system  of  public  labor  exchanges.  The  de- 
tachment of  women  from  large  industrial  and  commercial 
interests  and  their  intimate  knowledge  of  the  problems  of 
everyday  living  should  enable  them  to  contribute  an  ele- 
ment of  fair-mindedness  and  practical  sagacity  much  needed 
in  all  such  bodies. 

The  three  community  [jroblems  upon  which  attention  is 


138        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

focused  at  present  are  housing,  recreation  or  the  uses  of 
leisure  time,  and  the  much  advertised  and  exploited  topic 
of  "Americanization."  More  in  the  background  but  press- 
ing for  attention  is  the  question  of  the  labor  market  and 
its  organization  through  some  kind  of  public  employment 
service.^  The  acute  shortage  of  teachers  and  the  progres- 
sive deterioration  of  the  schools  are  challenging  community- 
action  throughout  the  country.  And  enveloping  and  af- 
fecting every  specific  problem  is  the  general  situation 
created  by  the  shrinkage  of  the  dollar  and  the  demand 
for  a  more  democratic  organization  of  human  relations  in 
civic  life  and  in  the  professions  as  well  as  in  the  industries. 
Three  organizations  are  conspicuously  oflfering  them- 
selves to  communities  as  providing  means  of  dealing  with 
some  or  all  of  'these  problems.  They  are  Community 
Service,  Incorporated,  the  peace-time  successor  of  War- 
Camp  Community  Service,  itself  a  mobilization  of  the 
Playground  and  Recreation  Association ;  the  National  So- 
cial Unit  Organization ;  and  the  American  City  Bureau,  a 
business  enterprise  engaged  in  promoting  civic  activities 
chiefly  through  chambers  of  commerce.  Community 
Service  is  incorporated  under  a  charter  enabling  it  to  enter 
any  field  of  social  betterment,  but  it  announces  that  its 
primary  function  is  the  "initiation  of  leisure  time  activi- 
ties," including  under  this  term  all  activities,  recreational, 
social,  educational,  and  civic,  carried  on  outside  of  school 
hours  or  hours  of  employment.-  It  plans  to  undertake 
work  in  a  given  community  only  upon  invitation  and  to 
act  as  an  organizing  and  correlating  agency  and  a  clearing- 
house of  information  on  subjects  within  its  province.  Each 
community  is  to  organize  its  own  Community  Service,  to 
provide  for  a  permanent  community  service  secretary,  and 
to  form  representative  governing  and  advisory  committees 
not  identified  with  any  one  community  agency.  The  edu- 
cational and  civic  programs  of  Community  Service  Incor- 
porated are  still  largely  in  the  making.     Its  organization 

^  See  Don  D.  Lescohier.     The  Labor  Market  (1919). 

'See  John  L.  Gillin.  Wholesome  Citizens  and  Sparc  Time  (1918)  ; 
Frederick  G.  Bonser.  School  Work  and  Spare  Time  (1918),  Cleve- 
land Foundation. 


CIVIC  AND  GOVERNMENT  SERVICES      139 

is  left  purposely  somewhat  indefinite,  but  it  affords  op- 
portunities of  various  kinds  to  both  men  and  women 
workers  with  recreational,  social,  and  civic  training  and 
experience  along  accepted  lines  of  affiliated  and  auxiliary 
service. 

A  more  intensive  and  novel  community  program  is  put 
forward  by  the  National  Social  Unit  Organization,  illus- 
trated by  its  three-year  experimental  demonstration  in  a 
neighborhood  of  thirty-one  blocks  in  Cincinnati,  with  a 
population  of  about  fifteen  thousand.  The  object  of  this 
venture  was  to  try  out  a  plan  of  neighborhood  organiza- 
tion whereby  "popular  control  would  be  actual  and  active, 
yet  where  community  affairs  would  be  completely  handled." 
The  social  unit  system  involves  a  series  of  block  councils, 
each  electing  an  executive,  and  a  series  of  occupational 
councils  made  up  of  workers  resident  or  serving  in  the 
neighborhood — doctors,  nurses,  recreational  workers,  teach- 
ers, social  workers,  ministers,  and  trade  unionists  are  or- 
ganized in  Cincinnati — each  with  a  similar  executive.  The 
block  executives  form  the  citizens'  council ;  the  occupational 
executives,  the  occupational  or  expert  council ;  the  general 
council  consists  of  both  bodies  meeting  together;  the  coun- 
cil of  executives,  of  the  presiding  officers  of  the  three 
bodies.  Through  this  system  "the  people  can  tell  the  ex- 
perts what  they  want  done  and  the  experts  can  advise  the 
people  how  to  do  it."  "The  block  workers  study  needs 
and  reflect  popular  desire  and  psychology,  carry  informa- 
tion to  the  total  population,  bring  back  facts  and  ideas  from 
the  whole  district,  decide  broad  policy,  and  turn  to  the 
occupational  council  for  the  formulating  of  programs  to 
satisfy  needs  discovered  and  policies  adopted."  The  plan 
looks  to  the  ideal  of  an  entire  city  organized  into  cooperat- 
ing social  units. 

The  Cincinnati  social  unit  has  attracted  a  large  amount 
of  attention,  and  has  been  attacked  as  involving  subversive 
political  principles.  It  has  invited  the  careful  examination 
of  groups  of  experts  representing  medicine,  public  health 
nursing,  social  service,  labor,  business,  and  the  church,^  who 
have  reported  generally  in  its  favor  and  recommended  fur- 

'  The  Social  Unit  Plan  (1920),  National  Social  Unit  Organization. 


140        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

ther  demonstrations  in  neighborhoods  of  different  types. 
The  Community  Councils  in  New  York  City  are  cooperating 
with  the  National  Social  Unit  Organization  in  plans  for 
local  units.  Whether  social  units  can  be  sustained  on  a 
self-supporting  basis  and  whether  they  are  adaptable  to 
various  communities  remain  to  be  seen.  But  they  repre- 
sent a  piece  of  constructive  social  planning  which  deserves 
close  study  and  which  is  in  line  with  other  plans  for  demo- 
cratic local  organization  and  control — shop  committees, 
labor  guilds,  cooperative  societies.  Their  challenge  to  social 
and  civic  thinking  comes  at  an  appropriate  moment. 

Largely  through  the  efforts  of  the  American  City  Bureau, 
an  organization  of  community  experts  and  campaign  direc- 
tors, chambers  of  commerce  are  becoming  active  in  civic 
affairs  and  developing  a  broader  community  outlook.  Since 
its  origin  in  1913  the  Bureau  has  reorganized  a  large  num- 
ber of  chambers  to  carry  out  definite  community  programs 
under  the  direction  of  civic  secretaries.  For  several  years 
it  has  conducted  a  summer  school  of  community  leadership 
for  secretaries,  beginning  with  an  attendance  of  fifteen  in 
1915  and  reaching  three  hundred  in  1919.  It  began  in 
1920  the  publication  of  a  bi-weekly  sheet  entitled  Com- 
munity Leadership  through  the  Chamber  of  Commerce,  and 
is  cooperating  with  Community  Service  Incorporated  in 
the  movement  for  community  buildings  as  war  memorials 
and  with  educational  authorities  in  the  campaign  for  bet- 
ter schools  and  better  salaries  for  teachers.^  It  organized 
the  first  financial  campaign  of  War-Camp  Community 
Service. 

Chambers  of  commerce  are  knit  into  a  national  system 
through  their  membership  in  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  of 
the  United  States  with  headquarters  in  Washington.  With 
their  strongly  commercial  origins,  interests,  and  member- 
ship, they  have  naturally  been  held  to  represent  the  busi- 
ness interests  of  the  community  and  to  be  practically  pow- 
erful organizations  of  employers.  As  such,  they  have 
often  been  regarded  with  suspicion  by  civic  and  social 
workers  and  with  open  hostility  by  organized  labor.    While 

^  See  Know  and  Help  Vottr  Schools.  American  City  Bureau 
(Pamphlet,  1920). 


i 


CIVIC  AND  GOVERNMENT  SERVICES      141 

.  it  would  be  unfortunate  to  allow  them  to  dominate  com- 
munity undertakings,  their  new  civic  spirit  and  policies  in- 
vite a  closer  cooperation  with  them  than  has  hitherto 
obtained.  They  should  be  represented  in  the  management 
of  community  affairs  together  with  all  other  organized 
groups,  labor  unions,  social  agencies,  professional  associa- 
tions, schools,  libraries,  churches,  and  the  city  government. 
Certain  chambers  are  including  representatives  of  organ- 
ized labor  on  their  civic  committees.  The  Survey  reports 
a  novel  arrangement  in  Aberdeen,  Washington,  where,  as  a 
result  of  war-time  activities  and  by  mutual  consent,  organ- 
ized labor  has  undertaken  to  support  the  social  services  of 
the  town — visiting  nursing,  home  service,  community  serv- 
ice, boys'  and  girls'  clubs,  and  so  on — and  the  chamber  of 
commerce  to  attend  to  matters  of  general  prosperity — har- 
bor improvements,  new  industries,  and  the  like. 

Chambers  of  commerce  are  very  generally  promoting 
housing  and  Americanization  programs  and  working  for 
better  roads  and  better  marketing  facilities.  But  their 
civic  interests  are  highly  diversified.^  With  the  growth  of 
these  community  activities,  they  are  beginning  to  see  the 
advantage  of  women  members  and  of  paid  women  workers. 
Of  139  secretaries  replying  to  an  inquiry  made  by  the 
American  City  Bureau  regarding  the  attitude  of  their 
chambers  toward  women,  the  large  majority  stated  that 
they  admit  women,  and  have  women  members  on  some 
twenty  different  kinds  of  civic  committees.  In  a  number 
of  places  the  recently  organized  Federation  of  Business  and 
Professional  Women's  Clubs  is  co5perating  with  the  cham- 
ber of  commerce.  Several  cities  have  independent  women's 
chambers,  which  have  formed  a  national  organization.  But 
the  tendency  appears  to  be  in  the  direction  of  a  single  cham- 
ber for  both  men  and  women.  Hitherto,  most  chamber  of 
commerce  secretaries  have  been  men,  although  there  have 
been  a  few  women  secretaries  in  the  smaller  communities 
and  a  number  of  women  assistants  in  larger  places.  A 
woman  is  joint  director  with  her  husband  of  the  industrial 
service  department  of  a  chamber  of  commerce  in  a  middle- 
western  city.    These  opportunities  are  likely  to  increase,  and 

'See  Lucius  Wilson.     The  New  Profession  (ipip)' 


142        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

they  should  appeal  to  women  who  are  interested  in  the  appli- 
cations of  business  intelligence  to  civic  problems  and  in  a 
better  understanding  among  different  elements  in  the  com- 
munity. 

Various  other  agencies  are  actively  concerned  with  com- 
munity and  civic  affairs.  The  Open  Forum  Movement, 
originating  in  Boston,  is  spreading  under  various  auspices. 
The  Interchurch  World  Movement  has  made  a  series  of 
community  surveys  to  study  the  distribution  and  efficacy 
of  protestant  churches  and  their  relations  to  other  com- 
munity endeavors.  For  thirty  years  social  settlements  have 
been  dealing  with  neighborhood  problems,  and  have  a  wealth 
of  experience  to  contribute.  In  a  sense,  they  were  the 
pioneer  community  centers,  and  have  been  steadily  moving 
in  the  direction  of  assisting  communities  to  organize  their 
own  activities.  They  have  made  invaluable  local  studies, 
and  share  experience  through  the  National  Federation  of 
Settlements.  The  College  Settlements  Association  of  the 
eastern  women's  colleges  has  responded  to  the  spirit  of  the 
times  by  becoming  the  Intercollegiate  Community  Service 
Association  with  a  membership  of  nineteen  colleges  and  a 
number  of  private  schools.  It  offers  fellowships  for  train- 
ing in  community  social  work.  Several  settlements,  such 
as  South  End  House  in  Boston,  do  likewise.  No  better 
apprenticeship  can  be  found  for  a  beginner  in  community 
work  than  a  sojourn  in  a  well  organized  and  modern  settle- 
ment house.  Before  the  war  the  movement  to  use  school- 
houses  as  community  centers  had  gained  considerable  head- 
way.^ 

The  multiplication  of  community  organizations  and  the 
greatly  increased  interest  of  communities  in  their  own 
affairs  are  leading  to  active  community  investigation  and 
research,  to  the  making  of  numerous  surveys  and  studies 
of  special  problems.  The  techniques  of  such  inquiries 
have  been  worked  out  by  bureaus  of  municipal  research 
and  kindred  organizations  on  the  side  of  public  administra- 
tion, finance  and  accounting,  and  by  great  endowments  like 

*  See  Henry  E.  Jackson.  A  Community  Cetiter—What  It  Is  and 
How  to  Organize  It.  Bull.  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Education,  1918,  No.  11. 
L.  J.  Hanifan.     The  Community  Center  (1920). 


CIVIC  AND  GOVERNMENT  SERVICES      143 

the  Russell  Sage,  Rockefeller  and  Carnegie  Foundations. 
The  pioneer  bureau  of  municipal  research  in  New  York 
City,  established  by  public-spirited  citizens,  has  been  fol- 
lowed by  others  in  Philadelphia,  Cincinnati,  Minneapolis, 
and  elsewhere,  by  state  and  national  research  bureaus 
under  similar  auspices,  by  libraries  of  municipal  and  legis- 
lative reference.  Fifteen  or  twenty  such  research  bodies 
are  federated  in  the  Governmental  Research  Conference,^ 
The  departments  of  surveys  and  exhibits  and  education  of 
the  Sage  Foundation  have  made  surveys  of  Springfield, 
Illinois,  and  of  the  educational  situation  in  Cleveland. 
Cleveland  has  made  a  recreation  survey,  and  is  at  present 
making  a  hospital  and  health  survey  with  a  staff  of  experts 
of  national  reputation.  Other  surveys  of  various  kinds  are 
constantly  undertaken.  Experienced  professional  women 
have  been  members  of  both  permanent  and  temporary  staffs, 
as  assistant  directors,  field  investigators,  statisticians,  spe- 
cial librarians,  makers  of  graphs  and  charts,  organizers  of 
information  services  and  of  exhibits.  A  number  of 
women  gained  valuable  experience  of  this  kind  in  govern- 
ment service  during  the  war.  The  techniques  of  survey- 
making  and  of  preparing  graphs  and  charts  and  exhibit 
materials  of  various  kinds  constitute  what  is  practically  a 
profession  in  itself,  allied  with  statistics  on  the  one  hand 
and  publicity  on  the  other.  These  methods  are  increasingly 
in  demand  by  industrial  and  commercial  organizations.^ 

One  of  the  most  urgent  and  practical  community  move- 
ments is  that  for  better  housing  and  more  adequate  control 
of  housing  projects,  in  the  past  too  often  in  the  hands  of 
greedy  and  competitive  private  interests.  Although  the 
fundamental  importance  of  decent  housing  had  been  fully 
recognized  by  experts  before  the  war,  and  housing  laws  of 
a  restrictive  nature  had  been  passed  with  more  or  less 
adequate  provision  for  inspection,  housing  as  a  community 
problem  had  not  caught  popular  attention  nor  led  to  commu- 

*  See  Gustavus  A.  Weber.  Organised  Efforts  for  the  Improvement 
of  Methods  of  Adimnistratton  in  the   United  States   (1919). 

'See  E.  T.  and  Mary  S.  Routzahn.  Exhibit  Methods  (1919).  and 
Mary  S.  Routzahn.  Traveling  Publicity  Campaigns  (1920).  Willard 
C.  Brinton.    Graphic  Methods  for  Presenting  Facts  (1914). 


144        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

nity  action.  High  land  values  and  land  speculation,  the  es- 
tablishment of  new  industries,  the  crowdings  and  shiftings 
of  population,  and  the  large  profits  made  through  rents 
under  such  conditions  all  conspired  to  confuse  the  issues 
and  to  block  progress. 

But  the  acute  shortage  of  houses  due  to  the  practical 
cessation  of  building  during  the  war,  the  mounting  scale  of 
rents,  and  the  widespread  interest  aroused  by  the  rapid 
building  of  cantonments,  the  industrial  housing  projects  of 
the  United  States  Housing  Corporation,  the  Shipping 
Board,  and  various  war  industries,  have  brought  the  whole 
matter  home  to  the  public  mind  as  never  before.  The 
towns  and  cities  that  sprang  up  almost  over  night  to  meet 
the  needs  of  great  munition  and  chemical  plants  have 
thrown  a  flood  of  light  not  only  upon  industrial  housing 
but  upon  ordinary  housing  for  the  mass  of  people  of  small 
means  and  even  upon  the  hardly  touched  topics  of  rural 
housing  and  the  temporary  housing  of  migratory  workers. 
They  have  likewise  proved  that  the  most  modern  dwellings 
and  shops  do  not  make  a  satisfied  and  self-active  com- 
munity without  places  for  public  gathering  and  oppor- 
tunities for  pubHc  recreation.  The  Report  of  the  U.  S. 
Housing  Corporation  of  the  Department  of  Labor  is  a 
mine  of  information,  presenting  the  results  of  the  best 
European  and  American  experience  and  describing  housing 
projects  completed  or  under  construction  at  the  signing 
of  the  armistice.  Cities  all  over  the  country  are  studying 
their  housing  needs  and  launching  housing  projects  with 
the  aid  of  state  and  municipal  appropriations  or  through 
cooperative  associations.  They  are  taking  over  in  some 
cases  uncompleted  government  enterprises.  Wisconsin  has 
recently  passed  a  municipal  and  cooperative  housing  law. 
The  California  Immigration  and  Housing  Commission  is 
handling  the  difficult  matter  of  housing  seasonal  and  migra- 
tory workers.  Akron,  Ohio,  has  a  five  million  dollar  hous- 
ing program.^  Undertakings  on  this  scale  involve  com- 
prehensive town  and  factory  planning  and  civic  and  social 
studies  of  many  kinds,  calling  for  various  professional 
experts. 

*  See  Homes  for  Workmen.    Southern  Pine  Association  (1919). 


CIVIC  AND  GOVERNMENT  SERVICES      145 

Women  have  long  been  active  in  housing  reform,  and  a 
few,  like  Mrs.  Albion  Fellows  Bacon,  have  been  leaders  of 
the  movement.  A  recent  valuable  summary  is  written  by 
a  woman. ^  They  have  made  housing  surveys  and  served 
as  tenement  house  inspectors  and  rent  collectors.  In  1917 
New  York  City  had  nine  women  tenement  inspectors,  three 
of  them  detailed  to  instruct  tenants.  Women  have  col- 
lected rents  for  such  organizations  as  the  Octavia  Hill  As- 
sociation in  Philadelphia  and  the  Trinity  Corporation  in 
New  York,  as  well  as  for  real  estate  firms. ^  With  the 
present  developments  in  community  housing,  they  will  un- 
doubtedly have  still  wider  opportunities.  But  they  will 
need  thorough  preparation,  not  only  in  social  economics 
and  city  government,  but  in  the  elements  of  hygiene  and 
sanitation,  building  construction,  administration,  and  finance. 
Some  knowledge  of  law  as  it  relates  to  rents  and  contracts 
will  be  desirable.  Special  courses  for  housing  workers 
are  as  yet  hard  to  find,  although  housing  problems  are 
treated  in  university  and  college  courses  and  in  schools  of 
social  work.  Women  interested  in  work  in  connection 
with  housing  will  do  well  to  seize  every  opportunity  af- 
forded by  positions  of  an  indirectly  apprentice  character, 
not  only  with  social  and  civic  agencies  but  also  with  firms 
of  contractors,  architects,  and  real  estate  dealers.  (See 
Chapter  XIV.) 

Closely  allied  with  housing  and  city  or  town  planning 
as  community  problems  are  the  problems  of  community 
provision  for  recreation  in  its  narrower  sense  and  for  the 
other  uses  of  leisure  time.  The  announcement  that  Com- 
munity Service  Incorporated  is  to  work  chiefly  in  this 
field  has  already  been  mentioned,  but  many  other  agencies 
are  active.  The  changes  brought  about  by  the  general 
shortening  of  working  hours,  by  prohibition,  and  by  im- 
proved standards  of  health  and  education  will  create  new 
recreational  and  community  interests  and  activities  of  many 
kinds.     Dr.  William   Mayo  said  not  long  ago  to  a  great 

*  Edith  Elmer  Wood.  The  Housing  of  the  Unskilled  Wage 
Earner  C1919) 

*See  Mary  R.  Beard.  Women's  Work  in  Municipalities  (1916), 
Chapter  6. 


146        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

gathering  of  surgeons  that  since  the  close  of  the  civil 
war  fifteen  years  had  been  added  to  the  average  length  of 
human  life,  and  that  fifteen  more  might  be  added  in  this 
country  within  the  next  twenty  years.  There  is  a  chance  to- 
day to  apply  for  the  first  time  in  modern  life  Aristotle's  test 
of  citizenship,  the  right  employment  of  leisure.  Just  as 
society  cannot  afford  to  prohibit  child  labor  without  at 
the  same  time  providing  adequate  schools,  so  it  cannot 
afford  to  reduce  hours  of  labor  without  at  the  same  time 
providing  adequately  for  the  spending  of  the  time  thus  set 
free.  This  provision,  according  to  newer  ways  of  thinking, 
must  include  commercial  ^  as  well  as  non-commercial  recrea- 
tion— the  motion-picture  house,  the  theater,  the  dance-hall, 
and  the  pool-room  as  well  as  the  playground  and  the  com- 
munity center.  It  must  include  facilities  for  adult  education 
through  more  democratic  and  effective  methods  of  univer- 
sity extension,  through  trade-union  colleges,  open  forums, 
clubs,  classes,  and  lectures,  many  of  them  held  in  com- 
munity buildings,  perhaps  through  an  American  adaptation 
of  the  British  Workers'  Educational  Association.^  It  must 
include  the  growth  of  civic  intelligence  through  the  active 
participation  of  all  groups  in  community  affairs  and  enter- 
prises. It  must  continue  and  develop  recreation  for  chil- 
dren and  young  people  through  playgrounds.  Boy  and 
Girl  Scout  organizations.  Christian  Associations,  self-gov- 
erning clubs  and  societies  under  various  auspices.  And 
everywhere  it  must  guard  against  the  danger  of  forcing 
upon  people  what  certain  groups  think  they  want  or  ought 
to  want,  rather  than  letting  them  determine  what  they 
want  for  themselves.  Active  communities  will  learn  to 
regulate  and  improve  their  own  commercial  recreations,  and 
there  seems  every  prospect  of  a  vigorous  development  of 
community  drama,  music,  pageantry  and  festival.  (See 
Chapter  XVI.)     Recreation  leaders  and  workers  are  more 

*  See  John  J.  Phelan.  Motion  Pictures  as  a  Phase  of  Commer- 
cialized Amuscvicnts  (1919). 

*  See  Adult  Working-Class  Education  in  Great  Britain  and  the 
United  States.  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics.  Bulletin  271 
(1920).  Final  Report  Adult  Education  Committee.  British  Min- 
istry of  Reconstruction  (1919). 


II 


CIVIC  AND  GOVERNMENT  SERVICES      147 

needed  than  ever,  but  motives  and  methods  are  steadily 
growing  more  democratic  and  less  philanthropic.  Training 
in  physical  education,  dramatics,  games,  folk-dancing,  and 
woodcraft  is  of  great  assistance.     (See  Chapter  V.) 

"Americanization,"  the  word  in  every  one's  mouth  to-day 
and  the  most  urgent  civic  problem  in  popular  estimation, 
can  be  dealt  with  fairly  only  against  the  background  of 
community  activity  in  general.  Although  it  means  differ- 
ent things  to  different  people,  and  is  being  advocated  by 
all  sorts  of  groups,  official  and  non-official,  from  a  variety 
of  motives  and  with  a  bewildering  variety  of  methods,  the 
nucleus  of  truth  and  common-sense  amid  the  floods  of  talk 
and  propaganda  appears  to  be  that  the  problem  of  the  for- 
eign-born and  non-English-speaking  resident,  whether  citi- 
zen or  alien,  is  essentially  a  community  problem,  and  must 
be  dealt  with  as  an  integral  part  of  other  community 
problems.  "Americanization''  is  not  merely  a  matter  of 
naturalization  nor  of  teaching  English  and  civics  to  for- 
eigners. It  involves  better  schools,  better  housing,  better 
health  conditions,  steady  employment  at  decent  wages 
and  hours,  facilities  for  recreation,  prompt  and  cheap  se- 
curing of  legal  justice;  freedom  of  every  group  from  dis- 
crimination and  exploitation ;  participation  of  every  group 
in  community  affairs.  This  is  an  "Americanization" 
program  that  applies  to  native-born  and  foreign-born  alike ; 
and  any  community  not  striving  to  put  it  into  practice  falls 
short  of  being  truly  American  and  truly  a  community. 
"Pockets"  of  ignorance  and  isolation  and  poverty  and  ill- 
health  and  helplessness  are  an  arraignment  of  any  com- 
munity, whatever  its  racial  composition.  The  Americaniza- 
tion Studies  just  completed  by  the  Carnegie  Corporation 
of  New  York  ^  reach  the  conclusion  that  the  all-important 
thing  to  strive  for  is  the  uniting  of  native  and  foreign 
born  in  America  through  unceasing  efforts  to  improve 
living  and  working  conditions  and  through  deepening 
the  channels  of  mutual  understanding,  codperation,  and 
good  will.  No  country  in  the  world  has  so  rich  and  so 
diverse  a  racial  composition,  and  each  of  its  groups  has 
something  to  contribute.     During  the  war  our  newer  popu- 

"^ Americanization  Studies.    Eleven  Volumes,  1920,  . 


148       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

lations  showed  a  touching  desire  to  share  burdens  and 
obligations.  In  numerous  ways  they  are  Americanizing 
themselves  through  their  own  leaders,  and  this  should  be 
encouraged.  But  we  of  the  older  stock  need  to  strive  to 
understand  their  psychology  and  to  help  them  to  understand 
ours  in  all  the  ways  of  common  living.  They  offer  us  a 
unique  opportunity  to  see  beneath  the  surface  in  dealing 
with  international  problems  and  to  play  our  part  intel- 
ligently in  the  new  society  of  peoples.  Only  by  fair  deal- 
ing and  respect  and  patience  and  social  imagination  on  both 
sides  shall  we  build  a  nation  that  is  truly  made  up  of  all 
our  racial  elements. 

In  the  meantime,  federal  and  state  governments  have  been 
drafting  Americanization  programs  and  passing  American- 
ization legislation.  State  and  local  boards  of  education, 
chambers  of  commerce,  employers,  churches,  libraries,  asso- 
ciations of  citizens  of  all  sorts,  have  been  working  inde- 
pendently or  cooperatively  and  with  inevitable  dupHcation 
and  confusion.  Occasionally  they  ask  the  help  of  organ- 
ized labor  and  of  the  foreign-born  groups  themselves,  or 
make  studies  of  local  foreign  populations.  It  seems  gen- 
erally admitted  that  evening  schools  do  not  meet  the  situa-- 
tion.  Day  classes  in  English  and  citizenship  are  being 
organized  in  factories,  sometimes  under  the  supervision  of 
the  board  of  education,  but  frequently  not.  The  Young 
Women's  Christian  Association  has  some  fifty  so-called 
international  institutes  for  work  with  foreign  women  and 
girls.  The  Council  of  Jewish  Women  is  active  in  immi- 
grant aid.  Universities  and  schools  of  social  work  are 
offering  courses  in  "Americanization."  Normal  schools 
and  state  boards  of  education  are  conducting  classes  in  the 
teaching  of  English  to  foreigners.  The  University  of  Min- 
nesota has  outlined  a  four-year  program;  the  University 
of  Wisconsin  and  other  institutions  offer  separate  courses. 
The  College  of  the  City  of  New  York  announces  lecture  and 
field  extension  courses  for  teachers  and  social  workers  on 
the  social  and  cultural  backgrounds  of  the  peoples  of  Greater 
New  York.  Columbia  University  has  extensive  plans  for 
research  courses  on  social  and  political  conditions  in  France, 
Russia,  England,  Germany,  the  Americas,  Japan  and  India. 


CIVIC  AND  GOVERNMENT  SERVICES      149 

The  enormous  amount  of  publicity  given  to  these  projects 
and  activities  has  filled  the  minds  of  many  young  women 
with  a  strong  desire  to  become  "Americanization  workers." 
But  there  is  as  little  room  here  for  the  inexperienced  as 
there  is  in  the  equally  popular  occupation  of  employment 
management.  Successful  workers  in  this  field  have  gained 
an  understanding  of  foreign  groups  through  service  among 
them  as  teachers,  social  and  community  workers,  librarians, 
nurses,  investigators ;  and  it  is  in  one  of  these  professions 
that  the  novice  should  learn  through  daily  contact.  With 
vigorous  community  development  "Americanization"  will 
become  largely  a  by-product,  and  we  may  hope  to  find  our- 
selves sharing  in  the  reality  and  hearing  much  less  of  the 
term. 

A  community  matter  attracting  far  less  attention  at  pres- 
ent than  the  three  movements  just  described  but  underlying 
them  all   and   demanding  careful   consideration   and   wise 
action  in  the  near  future  is  the  matter  of  modes  of  secur- 
ing employment.     The  meteoric  rise  and  fall  of  the  War- 
Emergency    United    States    Employment    Service,    which 
within  a  year  incorporated  the  few  existing  state  employ- 
ment systems,  and  established  nearly  nine  hundred  offices 
throughout  the  country  only  to  have  them  closed  through 
lack  of  support  from  Congress,  has  left  behind  as  much 
prejudice  as  enlightenment  owing  to  its  war-time  haste  and 
extravagance  and  to  its  bi-partisan  control  by  management 
and  labor,  each  group  accusing  the  other  of  undue  influ- 
ence.    But  some  method  of  organizing  the  labor  market  is 
seen  to  be  a  world  need ;  and  with  England  strengthening 
her  employment  exchanges,  Canada  organizing  a  system, 
and   the   first   international   labor    congress   providing   that 
each  nation  ratifying  its  convention  "shall  establish  a  sys- 
tem of  free  employment  agencies  under  the  control  of  a  cen- 
tral authority,"  the  United  States  is  brought  face  to  face 
with  the  question  of  setting  up  a  satisfactory  permanent 
public  employment   service.     Employment,   like  education, 
is  primarily  a  community  problem,  and  like  education,  it 
should  be  kept  out  of  politics  and  made  the  concern  of  all 
citizens  and  not  only  of  the  parties  immediately  concerned. 
"Community  labor  boards,"  or  whatever  take  their  place, 


I50       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

must  be  as  non-partisan  as  school  boards  and  as  representa- 
tive of  all  essential  public  interests.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  the 
"public"  needs  to  be  a  reality  and  not  merely  a  convenient 
fiction.  Women  have  a  necessary  place  on  such  boards.  In 
a  well  organized  system,  the  states  would  function  chiefly 
as  clearing-houses  in  the  distribution  of  workers;  the  fed- 
eral government  chiefly  as  a  clearing-house  of  information 
and  a  maintainer  of  standards.  Public  employment  service 
has  already  revealed  itself  as  a  coming  profession,  and  any 
adequate  system  should  provide  a  carefully  worked  out  plan 
for  training.  It  offers  one  of  the  very  best  opportunities 
for  constructive  community  and  personal  service,  and  should 
attract  a  high  type  of  worker.  It  continues  the  work  of 
the  schools,  and  is  essentially  "case-work"  dealing  with  ad- 
justments rather  than  maladjustments.  Communities  just 
now  could  do  nothing  better  than  to  make  thorough  studies 
of  the  agencies  dealing  with  employment  with  which  they 
are  provided  at  present, — the  character  and  profits  of  fee- 
charging  agencies,  the  efficacy  of  philanthropic  and  educa- 
tional agencies,  the  methods  of  industrial  and  commercial 
personnel  departments.  We  need  to  know  their  cost  in 
terms  both  of  actual  money  and  of  time  and  human  effort. 
Public  emplovment  service  as  a  profession  is  dealt  with  also 
in  Chapters  XI,  XVII,  and  XX. 

Twelve  women  in  community  and  civic  work  filling  our 
schedules  received  in  1918  and  1919  salaries  ranging  from 
$1,300  to  $4,000,  Vv'ith  a  median  salary  of  $2,250.  They  in- 
clude the  director  of  a  community  center  in  a  city  public 
school,  two  executive  secretaries  of  civic  clubs  with  both 
men  and  women  members,  an  executive  secretary  and  editor 
in  the  Open  Forum  Movement,  a  chamber  of  commerce  sec- 
retary, a  lecturer  and  director  of  research  on  immigration  in 
a  school  of  social  work,  a  director  of  a  department  of  ex- 
tended use  of  public  schools,  four  field  investigators  and 
research  workers  in  an  Americanization  study,  and  a  lec- 
turer on  current  events.  Eight  of  them  are  college  gradu- 
ates, three  with  graduate  work  and  one  a  doctor  of  philos- 
ophy. Of  the  other  three,  two  have  had  some  college  work. 
Three  have  had  courses  at  schools  of  social  work ;  one  at 
a  school  for  community  workers;  one  at  a  graduate  school 


CIVIC  AND  GOVERNMENT  SERVICES      151 

of  public  health ;  one  at  the  Eugenics  Record  Office ;  one  at 
a  business  school.  They  have  had  previous  experience  as 
teachers,  educational  executives,  social  workers  and  investi- 
gators, industrial  health  inspectors,  industrial  investigators, 
suffrage  organizers,  tenement  house  department  workers, 
journalists,  statisticians,  court  reporters. 

The  executive  secretary  of  a  city  and  county  civic  club 
says :  'T  plan  and  direct  the  work  of  twenty- four  different 
committees,  working  on  twenty-four  different  kinds  of 
work.  Do  not  spend  too  much  time  on  details ;  touch  the 
high  spots ;  develop  system  and  team  work.  There  are  very 
few  women  civic  secretaries,  not  more  than  a  dozen  well- 
known  ones.  There  is  splendid  opportunity  in  this  line 
now." 

A  western  chamber  of  commerce  secretary  says :  "I  man- 
age the  office,  which  includes  a  free  employment  agency, 
answer  correspondence,  keep  records,  and  direct  activities. 
During  the  harvest  season  I  kept  the  office  open  from  5 
A.  M.  to  II  P.  M.  I  was  given  the  same  salary  as  my 
predecessors  who  were  men.  In  fact  a  man  was  fired  to 
make  room  for  me.  If  possible,  take  special  training  for 
this  work,  and  take  first  a  position  as  assistant  to  an  effi- 
cient commercial  secretary." 

The  open  forum  secretary  says :  *T  arrange  for  speak- 
ers, place  advertising,  write  newspaper  notices,  interview 
musicians  and  others  who  desire  engagements,  edit  organ 
of  the  Open  Forum  Movement.  The  only  hope  for  this 
movement  is  to  rouse  the  community  to  the  value  of  the 
work.    Energetic  young  women  might  help  in  this." 

A  worker  on  an  Americanization  study,  assigned  to  spe- 
cial investigation  of  the  foreign  languages  press  and  theater 
and  of  immigrant  heritages,  says:  "I  interview  editors  of 
foreign  language  papers,  engage  and  handle  staff  reading 
these  papers,  chart  statistics  in  graphic  form,  and  so  on." 


The  civil  service,  federal,  state,  and  municipal,  as  afford- 
ing opportunities  for  professional  women,  is  taken  up  at 
this  point  partly  because  civil  administration  is  undertaking 
to  deal  with  many  community  matters  discussed  in  this  and 


152        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

other  chapters,  and  partly  because  it  is  public  and  civic 
service  in  the  most  explicit  form.  Specific  civil  service 
positions  are  so  varied  in  their  nature  that  they  are  more 
appropriately  considered  in  the  several  chapters.  But  all 
branches  and  departments  of  government  are  becoming 
employers  of  professional  workers.  The  federal  civil  serv- 
ice is  usually  first  thought  of  in  connection  with  the  term, 
but  there  are  ten  states  and  some  two  hundred  cities  with 
a  classified  service.  Recent  reorganizations  of  state  ad- 
ministration, such  as  those  accomplished  in  Illinois  and 
Ohio  and  proposed  in  New  York  and  Massachusetts,  have 
added  to  the  number  and  quality  of  professional  opportu- 
nities. The  federal  government  is  to-day  an  employer  of 
practically  every  type  of  worker.  The  Congressional  Joint 
Commission  on  Reclassification  of  Salaries  in  the  Washing- 
ton Federal  Services  found  2,066  different  titles  of  positions, 
although  not  all  of  them  represented  different  types  of  work. 
The  Report  of  this  Commission,  issued  in  March,  1920, 
presents  a  well-considered  plan  for  the  long  and  sorely 
needed  reorganization  of  the  federal  civil  service.  It  groups 
the  107,060  government  employees  in  Washington  in  1,762 
classes,  376  series,  and  44  services,  assigning  the  same  titles 
and  salaries  to  persons  doing  the  same  type  and  grade  of 
work,  wherever  they  are  found  in  government  employ- 
ment, in  place  of  the  present  hodgepodge  of  differences 
and  inequalities.  It  provides  personnel  specifications  of 
duties,  qualifications,  main  lines  of  promotion,  and  rates  of 
compensation ;  and  recommends  that  the  plan  be  extended  to 
the  federal  civil  service  outside  of  Washington ;  that  the 
Civil  Service  Commission  be  made  in  a  full  sense  the  cen- 
tral personnel  and  classification  agency  of  the  government, 
with  a  comprehensive  and  uniform  employment  policy ;  that 
an  advisory  council,  made  up  in  equal  numbers  of  admin- 
istrative officers  and  non-administrative  employees,  be  es- 
tablished and  authorized  to  organize  similar  personnel  com- 
mittees in  each  government  department  or  service ;  that 
the  principle  of  equal  pay  for  equal  work  be  consistently 
adopted ;  that  the  Civil  Service  Commission  be  empowered 
to  establish  a  definite  system  of  promotion  based  upon 
efficiency   ratings   and  examinations,   to  take  measures   to 


CIVIC  AND  GOVERNMENT  SERVICES      153 

provide  for  the  training  of  employees  in  service,  and  to 
recommend  from  time  to  time  the  revision  of  salaries  and 
wages.  It  points  out  the  present  injustices  in  salaries,  due 
to  the  fact  that  some  are  fixed  by  statute,  and  others  are 
paid  from  "lump  sum"  appropriations.  While  the  bill 
drawn  by  the  Commission  to  put  its  recommendations  into 
effect  has  not  yet  been  passed  by  Congress,  the  report  is  an 
important  contribution  to  the  movement  backed  by  both 
political  parties  to  modernize  the  federal  administration, 
and  is  bound  to  have  significant  results. 

Meanwhile,  the  numbers  of  professional  women  and  col- 
lege graduates,  trained  and  untrained,  who  were  in  gov- 
ernment service  during  the  war  in  capacities  ranging  from 
routine  clerks  to  heads  of  bureaus,  assistants  to  executives, 
and  research  and  statistical  experts,  have  called  the  atten- 
tion of  this  group  to  government  service  as  a  career,  or  at 
least  a  valuable  professional  experience,  and  the  attention 
of  the  government  to  professional  women  as  a  useful  labor 
supply.  Not  a  few  war-workers,  both  men  and  women, 
have  remained  in  government  employment ;  and  a  new  spirit 
of  independence  and  initiative  is  manifest  throughout  the 
entire  federal  civil  service.  The  Federal  Employees'  Union 
includes  members  of  the  highest  professional  standing,  and 
has  made  concerted  protest  against  the  inconsistencies  and 
irregularities  of  salary  and  promotion,  as  well  as  outlining 
policies  and  programs.  The  Reclassification  Commission 
and  the  National  Civil  Service  Reform  League  have  both 
urged  the  giving  of  civil  service  workers  a  voice  in  deter- 
mining the  conditions  of  their  own  employment. 

Several  studies  have  recently  been  made  of  existing  dis- 
criminations against  qualified  women  in  federal,  state,  and 
municipal  civil  services.  The  Federation  of  Women's  Civil 
Service  Organizations  has  circulated  widely  a  pamphlet 
entitled  Women's  Place  in  Cknl  Service,'^  based  on  a  study 
of  civil  service  commissions  of  the  three  types  and  showing 
that  (i)  women  are  often  arbitrarily  excluded  from  civil 
service  examinations;  (2)  even  when  women  appear  on 
eligible  lists,  the  appointing  officer,  practically  always  a  man, 
has  the  right  to  specify  sex;  (3)   separate  eligible  lists  of 

*  May  B.  Upshaw   (June,  1919). 


154        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

men  and  of  women  are  frequently  maintained.  The  pam- 
phlet says :  "Under  many  Commissions  women  are  not 
permitted  even  to  be  examined  for  work  of  any  but  a  sub- 
ordinate character,  and  mainly  in  the  old  fields  that  have  al- 
ways been  open  to  them,  stenography,  nursing,  teaching, 
and  institutional  labor." 

An  even  more  important  bulletin.  Women  in  the  Gov- 
ernment Service,  has  been  issued  by  the  Women's  Bureau 
of  the  Department  of  Labor.^  It  is  based  upon  a  careful 
study  of  federal  civil  service  examinations  held  during 
the  first  six  months  of  1919,  and  shows  that  during  that 
period  sixty  per  cent  of  these  examinations,  covering  155 
types  of  position  out  of  a  total  of  260,  were  closed  to 
women,  and  over  sixty-four  per  cent  of  examinations  for 
professional  positions.  On  the  other  hand,  all  but  seven 
clerical  examinations  were  open  to  them.  Five  days  after 
this  report  was  submitted  to  the  Civil  Service  Commis- 
sion on  October  27,  1919,  the  Commission  issued  a  ruling 
opening  all  examinations  to  women  but  still  reserving  to 
the  department  appointing  officer  the  right  tO'  specify  sex 
in  asking  for  eligibles  for  a  given  vacancy.  The  Women's 
Bureau,  however,  points  out  that  the  Congressional  legis- 
lation giving  preference  to  ex-soldiers  at  lower  civil  serv- 
ice ratings  than  civilians  would  give  women  no  chance  of 
appointment  whatever  if  this  were  not  allowed.  There 
are  already  some  55,000  soldiers  on  the  lists.  The  Report 
also  shows  that  of  8,000  appointments  during  the  months 
of  January  and  February,  1919,  one  hundred  men  and  two 
women  received  initial  salaries  of  $3,600  and  over.  In 
clerical  services  more  women  than  men  were  appointed 
in  proportion  to  their  numbers  on  the  eligible  lists ;  in 
higher  services,  30  per  cent  of  the  eligibles  were  women, 
and  only  15  per  cent  of  the  appointments.  In  positions 
where  the  entering  salary  is  not  fixed  by  statute,  women 
commonly  begin  at  a  lower  salary  than  men  of  like  quali- 
fications. This  is  partly  due  to  their  inferior  bargaining 
power,  since  applicants  are  asked  to  state  the  lowest  salary 
which  they  will  accept. 

In  spite  of  the  situation  revealed  by  these  reports — in 
'Bertha  M.  Nienburg.     Women's  Bureau,  Bull.  No.  8  (1920). 


CIVIC  AND  GOVERNMENT  SERVICES      155 

fact  largely  because  of  them,  since  they  are  certain  to  lead 
to  correction  of  obvious  inequalities  of  treatment, — the  out- 
look for  professional  women  in  the  civil  services  has  never 
been  so  encouraging.  But  there  is  need  for  continuous 
vigilance  and  publicity  and  for  further  local  studies  such 
as  the  study  of  Opportunities  for  Women  in  the  Municipal 
Civil  Service  of  the  City  of  Nezv  York  issued  in  1918 
by  the  Intercollegiate  Bureau  of  Occupations.  The  Wom- 
en's Bureau,  the  Federation  of  Women's  Civil  Service  Or- 
ganizations, and  the  Women's  Auxiliary  of  the  National 
Civil  Service  Reform  League  might  well  combine  on  a 
program. 

Women  in  the  federal  civil  service  filling  our  schedules 
report  salaries  ranging  from  $1,500  to  $4,500  plus  official 
traveling  expenses,  with  a  median  salary  of  $2,310.  They 
include  executives,  scientific  and  economic  experts,  field  su- 
pervisors, special  agents,  librarians,  and  chief  clerks  in  the 
Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics  and  the  Children's  Bureau  of 
the  Department  of  Labor,  the  States  Relations  Service,  Bu- 
reau of  Markets,  and  library  of  the  Department  of  Agri- 
culture, the  Public  Health  Service  of  the  Treasury  De- 
partment, the  Federal  Board  for  Vocational  Education. 
Women  in  state  civil  services  report  salaries  ranging  from 
$1,500  to  $2,500  and  living  with  a  median  salary  of  $1,980. 
They  include  a  state  supervisor  of  mother's  aid,  a  director 
of  food  and  drug  inspection  and  a  bacteriologist  in  state 
departments  of  health,  a  state  factory  inspector,  and  super- 
intendents and  resident  physicians  in  state  institutions. 
Women  in  municipal  civil  services  report  salaries  ranging 
from  $1,350  to  $5,100  with  a  median  salary  of  $2,100.  They 
include  directors  of  a  bureau  of  child  hygiene  and  a  voca- 
tional guidance  bureau,  the  secretary  of  a  board  of  chil- 
dren's guardians,  the  secretary  of  a  board  of  estimate,  civil 
service  examiners,  estimate  examiners,  a  lawyer  in  a  city 
legal  department,  a  director  of  extension  use  of  school 
buildings,  a  probation  officer,  and  three  policewomen. 


CHAPTER  IX 

SOCIAL  SERVICES  :  I 

What  is  popularly  known  as  "social  service" — or  "social 
work"  as  its  practitioners  prefer  to  call  it,  though  they  are 
casting  about  for  another  name — is  taken  up  at  this  point 
for  several  reasons.  It  is  hoped  that  treating  it  between 
chapters  dealing  with  public  health,  food  and  living  con- 
ditions, and  community  organization  on  the  one  hand  and 
chapters  dealing  with  personnel  management,  industry, 
and  education  on  the  other,  may  best  serve  to  bring  out 
the  many  affiliations  of  "social  service"  and  the  forces  now 
at  work  transforming  its  scope,  outlook  and  methods.  A 
lively  exchange  of  workers  and  ideas  is  going  on  among 
these  several  fields,  and  they  are  all  striving  in  one  way 
or  another  to  put  into  practice  prevailing  views  regarding 
individual  behavior  and  the  more  democratic  management  of 
group  affairs. 

Modern  "social  service"  is  not  a  single,  homogeneous  oc- 
cupation but  a  cluster  of  "social  services,"  each  with  its 
own  problems,  training,  and  techniques.  We  hear  now- 
adays far  less  of  social  work  in  general  and  far  more  of 
child-welfare  work,  boys'  and  girls'  work,  family  case  work, 
"home  service,"  industrial  work,  rural  work,  protective 
work,  vocational  guidance,  mental  hygiene,  social  legislation, 
and  so  on.  Much  that  was  formerly  carried  on  frankly 
as  "social  service"  is  now  conducted  under  other  names  and 
other  auspices.  A  double  process  is  going  on  whereby 
social  ideals  and  practices  are  pervading  long  established 
professions  such  as  medicine  and  teaching,  and  at  the  same 
time  certain  "social  services"  such  as  community  work  and 
"industrial  welfare  work"  are  setting  up  as  independent 
professions  and  repudiating  "social  service"  motives  and  di- 

156 


SOCIAL  SERVICES  157 

rection.  There  is  a  growing  sensitiveness  to  the  use  of  the 
term  as  savoring  of  sentimentality  and  philanthropy  in- 
stead of  justice  and  as  only  a  step  removed  from  the  "char- 
ity" which  the  charity  organization  societies  are  dropping 
from  their  titles. 

On  the  other  hand  there  have  never  been  so  many  ''social 
workers,"  so  many  opportunities  and  plans  for  training  of 
a  professional  character,  nor  so  many  discussions  of  the 
status  of  social  work  as  a  profession.  All  this  invites  re- 
newed attention  to  the  question:  Is  there  a  profession 
of  social  work  with  certain  principles  and  standards  opera- 
tive in  all  the  various  "social  services"  and  meeting  funda- 
mental human  needs  as  they  are  met  by  the  professions  of 
medicine  and  engineering?  This  book  cannot  do  more  than 
call  attention  to  divergent  views,  which  may  be  summar- 
ized as  follows:  (i)  the  view  that  social  service  is  a  tran- 
sient and  self-extinguishing  profession,  made  necessary  only 
by  the  present  faulty  organization  of  society;^  (2)  the  view 
that  social  service  is  a  mediating  occupation  without  final 
professional  authority  and  responsibility  i^  (3)  the  view  that 
social  service  is  an  emerging  profession,  at  present  slough- 
ing off  its  non-professional  attributes  and  finding  its  per- 
manent professional  justification.  The  third  view  was  ad- 
vanced more  than  ten  years  ago  by  Dr.  Richard  C.  Cabot 
and  is  set  forth  in  a  recent  volume  by  Professor  Arthur 
J.  Todd. 

Dr.  Cabot  holds  that  "the  essence  and  center"  of  social 
work  is  "the  study  of  character  under  adversity,"  and  that 
"the  true  business  of  the  social  worker  is  psychical  diagno- 
sis and  treatment,"  to  know  "the  psychology  of  the  hard- 
pressed."  ^  He  has  recently  given  more  explicit  grounds 
for  this  position.  "The  profession  of  the  social  worker 
.  .  .  has  developed  in  the  United  States  mostly  within  the 
past  twenty-five  years.  Probably  ten  thousand  persons  are 
now  so  employed.  It  is  known  by  various  titles — social 
worker,    school   nurse,    home   and    school   visitor,    welfare 

*  See  Vida  D.  Scudder.  Opportunities  for  IV omen  in  Social  Serv- 
ice, in  Vocations  for  the  Trained  Woman.     Part  2   (1914). 

*See  Abraham  Flexncr.     Is  Social  Work  a  Profession  f  (1915)- 
'Social  Service  and  the  Art  of  Healing   (1909),  Chapter  2. 


158       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

worker,  hospital  social  worker,  probation  officer — varying 
according  to  the  particular  institution — the  hospital,  the 
court,  the  factory,  the  school — from  which  it  has  devel- 
oped .  .  .  yet  the  same  fundamental  motive  power  has  been 
at  work  in  each  case.  ...  It  has  become  more  and  more 
clear,  in  the  last  quarter  of  a  century,  that  we  are  dealing 
with  people  in  masses  so  great  that  the  individual  is  lost 
sight  of.  .  .  .  Above  all  duties  it  is  the  function  of  the  social 
worker  to  discover  and  to  provide  for  those  individual 
needs  which  are  in  danger  of  being  lost  sight  of."  ^  Dr. 
Cabot  likewise  makes  it  abundantly  clear  that  only  "as  an 
expert,  as  a  teacher,  or  as  a  pupil"  can  the  social  worker 
deal  with  people  on  a  basis  of  mutual  respect.  The  "pro- 
fessional friend"  or  the  "professional  good  neighbor"  imply 
almost  as  much  patronage  as  the  "lady  bountiful"  and  far 
more  unreality.^ 

Professor  Todd  says :  "Modern  social  reform  movements 
and  social  work  represent  a  series  of  concrete  attempts  to 
define  and  redefine  the  rights  of  man."  "The  individual  is 
not,  then,  a  natural  product ;  he  is  the  product  of  civiliza- 
tion ;  and  civilization  is  social  achievement."  ^  In  his  opin- 
ion, "Social  work  ought  to  stand  for  organizing  scientifically 
the  forces,  personal  and  material,  of  a  community  in  such 
a  way  as  to  eliminate  waste  and  friction,  and  to  raise  pro- 
gressively the  capacity  of  every  member  for  productivity, 
service,  and  joy  in  life."  It  will  become  a  profession  when 
social  workers  have  "the  will  to  think  clearly  and  to  know 
profoundly."  ^ 

Both  writers  thus  point  out  the  inherent  human  need 
which  may  be  said  to  furnish  a  basis  for  a  legitimate  pro- 
fession of  social  work — the  gap  between  individual  social 
equipment  and  the  demands  of  organized  society.  Refer- 
ence has  already  been  made  to  the  growing  realization  that 
modern  industry  and  modern  civilization  in  general  afford 
few  outlets  for  powerful  "instinctive  trends"  deeply  rooted 
in  man's  physical  and  mental  make-up.     All  the  "rights 

^Social  Work    (1919),   Introduction. 

'Social  Service  and  the  Art  of  Healing  (1909),  Chapter  2. 
^  The  Scientific  Spirit  and  Social  Work   (1919),  pp.  2,  25,  65,  70, 
107. 


II 


SOCIAL  SERVICES  159 

of  man" — the  right  to  health,  the  right  to  justice,  the  right 
to  education,  the  right  to  family  and  group  relations,  the 
right  to  work,  the  right  to  leisure,  the  right  to  religious 
and  artistic  satisfactions — have  an  instinctive  basis,  and  are 
essential  to  the  normal  life  and  development  of  every  hu- 
man being.  To  guarantee  some  of  these  rights  the  great 
professions  and  government  itself  exists ;  others  have  been 
left  to  the  inclination  and  effort  of  the  individual.  But  as 
things  are  now,  this  does  not  mean  that  the  individual  se- 
cures them.  Especially  are  man's  simple  social  instincts  and 
outgrown  social  traditions  a  meager  resource  for  the  achieve- 
ment of  normal  and  adequate  family  and  neighborhood 
and  civic  life  amid  the  complexities  and  barriers  and  pres- 
sures of  modern  civilization.  Unguided  and  unsupple- 
mented,  they  are  bound  to  result  in  failures,  perversions, 
and  maladjustments  of  many  kinds.  Just  because  of  this 
gulf  between  man's  original  social  nature  and  the  elaborate 
world  in  which  he  finds  himself  is  the  professional  social 
worker,  the  expert  in  social  relations,  critically  needed.  It 
is  perhaps  allowable  to  alter  Dr.  Cabot's  definition  of  social 
work  to  the  study  of  character  under  "complexity,"  since 
this  term  covers  the  difficulties  inherent  in  prosperity  as 
well  as  in  adversity.     Both  need  expert  treatment. 

Social  work  as  a  profession  has  two  different  but  sup- 
plementary aspects.  To  Dr.  Cabot  the  social  worker  is 
primarily  the  expert  dealing  with  individuals  as  affected  by 
social  conditions;  to  Professor  Todd  he  is  primarily  the 
expert  dealing  with  social  conditions  as  they  affect  the  lives 
of  individuals.  One  emphasizes  what  is  commonly  called 
"social  case  work"  /  the  other,  what  is  commonly  called 
"social  mass  work" — with  groups  and  communities,  through 
organization  and  legislation. 

Social  case  workers  and  social  mass  workers  are  learn- 
ing that  not  only  must  they  frequently  report  their  plans 
and  findings  to  each  other,  and  mutually  check  results,  but 
also  that  both  must  invite  the  genuine  participation  of  the 
public  and  of  the  people  most  intimately  concerned.  With- 
out this  triple  alliance,  the  worker  with   individuals  runs 

*  See  Mary  E.  Richmond.  Social  Diagnosis  (1917),  and  the  new 
monthly,  The  Family. 


i6o       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

the  danger  of  becoming  enmeshed  in  routine  details  and  of 
deaUng  with  people  as  "cases"  in  the  abstract  rather  than 
as  human  beings ;  the  worker  with  groups  runs  the  danger 
of  pushing  ready-made  programs ;  both  run  the  danger  of 
that  arrogance  of  mind  which  has  been  the  besetting  sin 
of  all  professions  and  which  largely  accounts  for  the  popu- 
lar distrust  of  "the  expert."  A  new  sense  of  "the  public," 
or  rather,  of  many  concrete  "publics,"  is  one  of  our  assets 
from  the  war,  although  it  is  still  too  frequently  employed 
in  the  interests  of  a  dubious  kind  of  publicity  and  with 
the  assumption  that  the  public  is  a  passive  body. 

As  society  is  now  constituted,  both  social  case  work  and 
social  mass  work  include  education,  relief,  and  prevention. 
In  the  past  case  work  has  centered  about  relief ;  mass 
work  about  prevention.  But  the  distinction  is  far  from 
rigid.  Many  social  enterprises  require  both  types  of  worker ; 
more  are  likely  to  do  so  in  the  future.  It  is  coming  to  be 
generally  recognized  that  relief  work  is  an  emergency 
measure,  a  sign  of  acute  maladjustment  calling  for  drastic 
improvement  in  conditions ;  and  that  social  work  as  a  pro- 
fession must  emphasize  educative,  preventive,  and  posi- 
tively constructive  social  measures. 

As  the  last  chapter  has  shown,  many  forms  of  group  or 
mass  work  are  ceasing  to  be  known  as  "social  service,"  and 
are  being  dealt  with  as  community  and  civic  matters  by 
public  and  private  bodies  not  identified  with  social  agencies 
as  such.  State  and  local  governments,  chambers  of  com- 
merce, employers  and  labor  unions,  professional  organiza- 
tions, educational  institutions,  are  all  cooperating  in  pro- 
grams for  housing,  health,  "Americanization,"  recreation, 
better  schools,  better  markets,  employment  exchanges,  and 
so  on.  These  movements  are  not  thought  of  as  philan- 
thropic any  more  than  public  education  is  thought  of  as 
philanthropic.  They  are  not  for  the  obviously  handicapped 
alone  but  for  the  benefit  of  the  entire  community.  But  al- 
ready they  are  finding  that  the  will  to  community  action  is 
by  no  means  the  same  thing  as  bringing  it  to  pass ;  and 
they  are  clamoring  for  expert  directors,  advisers,  investiga- 
tors, research  workers,  "civic  engineers."  Community  af- 
fairs can  be  successfully  handled  and  tested,  group  spirit 


SOCIAL  SERVICES  i6i 

and  intelligent  management  can  be  encouraged  only  by  ex- 
perts in  social  relations  who  know  the  conditions  which 
govern  satisfactory  and  progressive  joint  action  as  well  as 
the  reasons  for  failure.  Other  experts — doctors,  town- 
planners,  municipal  research  experts,  teachers,  public  offi- 
cials, employment  managers — all  contribute  ;  but  they  are  too 
much  involved  in  their  special  problems  to  make  the  work- 
ing of  the  whole  their  primary  object.  Hence,  there  is  a 
growing  demand  for  civic  or  community  leaders  and  ex- 
pert workers  with  groups  of  various  kinds.  As  yet,  their 
professional  equipment  is  hardly  equal  to  their  responsibiU- 
ties  and  opportunities,  although  training  courses  for  com- 
munity workers  are  springing  up.  With  the  present  ten- 
dency toward  the  social  self-direction  of  groups  and  neigh- 
borhoods, they  are  likely  to  be  increasingly  employed  under 
the  local  government  or  by  community  councils,  cooperative 
societies,  labor  unions,  and  the  like.  They  are  already  being 
called  in  as  consultants. 

A  similar  enlargement  and  shift  of  emphasis  toward  pre- 
vention and  construction  is  going  on  in  the  coextensive  field 
of  individual  or  case  work.  Social  case  workers  have  long 
been  looked  upon  as  practitioners  concerned  with  the  diag- 
nosis and  treatment  of  personal  and  family  social  ills  and 
disorders,  as  the  physician  with  bodily  and  mental  ills  and 
disorders.  Dr.  Cabot  draws  a  striking  parallel  between  the 
two,  and  insists  that  there  must  be  "team-work"  of  doctor, 
educator,  and  social  worker,  and  that  all  three  must  be 
teachers  and  psychologists.^  Case  work  was  the  pioneer 
type  of  social  work  in  the  modern  sense,  and  has  made  a 
distinctive  contribution  through  bringing  group  resources 
to  bear  upon  individual  needs.  It  has  suffered  from  per- 
haps inevitable  preoccupation  with  the  obviously  dependent 
or  handicapped,  so  that  the  term  has  come  to  be  unduly 
associated  in  the  popular  mind  with  this  group.  A  perma- 
nent benefit  of  the  Red  Cross  home  service  arises  from  a 
wider  extension  of  case-work  methods  to  individuals  and 
families  ordinarily  maintaining  their  social  integrity  and 
only  temporarily  disorganized  by  war-time  conditions. 
But  case  work  is  being  more  fundamentally  strengthened 
^Social  Service  and  the  Art  of  Hcaliny,  especially  Chapter  3. 


i62       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

by  several  independent  movements,  the  social  bearings  of 
which  grow  steadily  more  apparent.  Chief  among  these 
are  (i)  the  mental  hygiene  movement,  which  deals  with 
emotional  and  volitional  conduct  disorders  and  their  pre- 
vention; (2)  the  movement  for  intelligence  tests  of  people 
of  different  educational  and  occupational  groups  to  discover 
inferior,  average,  and  superior  native  ability;  (3)  the  vo- 
cational guidance  movement,  which  seeks  to  relate  indi- 
vidual aptitudes  and  occupational  requirements  and  re- 
sources; and  (4)  the  employment  or  personnel  management 
movement,  which  seeks  to  utilize  the  results  of  the  first 
three  movements  in  promoting  industrial  productivity  and 
the  personal  satisfactions  of  the  individual  worker.  All 
these  movements  are  based  on  the  case  work  view  that  ex- 
pert study  of  the  individual  is  requisite  for  satisfactory  ad- 
justments and  readjustments  in  practically  every  type  of 
social  situation.  It  is  a  theme  for  the  satirist  that  persons 
who  would  shudder  at  being  considered  "cases"  in  the  ordi- 
nary social  service  sense  plume  themselves  upon  having 
been  "psycho-analyzed"  or  "mentally-tested."  The  psychi- 
atrist and  the  psychologist  are  doing  to  some  extent  for  the 
well-to-do  what  the  case  worker  has  done  for  the  poor. 
They  strongly  reenforce  the  view  that  preventive  and  edu- 
cational work  must  begin  with  the  child  ;  and  also  give  warn- 
ing of  the  damage  done  by  clumsy  and  unskilled  handling 
of  problems  of  personality  and  conduct.  "Case  methods" 
are  being  applied  to  the  exceptionally  bright  as  well  as 
to  the  exceptionally  dull,  and  to  individuals  of  every  edu- 
cational and  economic  level,  with  the  object  of  releasing 
capacity  as  well  as  of  reducing  incapacity.  In  this  larger 
sense,  teachers,  vocational  counselors,  public  employment 
workers,  personnel  workers,  all  persons  who  carefully 
study  and  direct  the  behavior  tof  individuals,  are  case 
workers.  The  establishment  of  health  and  other  neighbor- 
hood centers  is  making  possible  the  instruction  of  small 
groups  to  supplement  or  take  the  place  of  the  slower  in- 
struction of  each  family  or  individual. 

One  of  the  obligations  resting  upon  professional  "case 
workers"  of  every  kind — doctors,  lawyers,  psychologists, 
as  well  as  social  workers — is  that  of  reporting  at  intervals 


SOCIAL  SERVICES  163 

case  data  as  a  basis  for  comparisons  and  conclusions.  A 
valuable  "case  history  series"  dealing  with  various  medical 
fields  has  already  appeared,  and  there  are  "case  books"  of 
law  and  economics.  A  similar  series  of  case  books  dealing 
with  the  different  fields  of  social  work  would  be  of  great 
professional  value  to  students  and  practitioners.  An  inno- 
vation only  recently  contemplated  but  much  needed  is  a 
series  of  "case  histories"  dealing  with  so-called  "normal" 
individuals  and  families.  We  know  infinitely  more  of  the 
delinquent  girl  than  we  do  of  the  "straight"  girl,  of  the 
psychopathic  person  than  we  do  of  the  non-psychopathic 
person.  Dr.  Helen  Woolley's  studies  of  boys  and  girls  going 
to  work  offer  something  of  the  sort,  and  a  recent  English 
study  of  eight  hundred  working  men  and  women  of  Sheffield 
shows  what  might  be  done  in  this  direction.^  Here,  colleges, 
normal  schools,  and  schools  of  social  work  might  help. 

A  practical  classification  of  social  work  recently  prepared 
by  the  National  Social  Workers'  Exchange  brings  out 
clearly  the  main  divisions  of  the  profession  and  the  di- 
versities in  each.  It  likewise  shows  the  interrelations  of 
social  work  and  other  professions,  and  includes  certain 
types  of  work  which  in  this  book  are  dealt  with  as  separate 
allied  fields  or  at  least  debatable  territory.  Its  six  main  di- 
visions are  as  follows:  (i)  Social  Case  Work  (work  with 
individuals);  (2)  Social  Group  Work;  (3)  Social  Reform 
Work  (work  with  people  as  a  mass)  ;  (4)  Social  Research 
Work  (the  discovery  and  use  of  facts);  (5)  Industrial 
Work;  (6)  Specialties. 

Under  social  case  work  it  includes  child  welfare  work ; 
church  visiting  work ;  family  case  work ;  medical  social 
work ;  occupational  therapy ;  probation,  protective,  parole, 
and  prison  work ;  public  health  nursing  and  visiting ;  psychi- 
atric social  work ;  school  visiting ;  visiting  housekeeping ;  vo- 
cational guidance  (in  educational  institutions  only)  ;  wel- 
fare work  (see  Industrial  Work).  This  list  indicates  that 
what  used  to  be  considered  the  main  type  of  case  work, 
that  done  by  charity  organization  societies  with  families 
in  social  and  economic  difficulties,  now  takes  its  place  as 
only  one  among  many  types,  "family  case  work."     In  view 

^  The  Equipment  of  the  Workers  (1919). 


i64        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

of  recent  analyses  of  family  psychology  and  its  effect  upon 
children,  work  with  families  may  be  at  the  point  of  enlarg- 
ing its  scope  and  enriching  its  techniques.  The  American 
Association  for  Organizing  Charity  has  changed  its  name  to 
the  American  Association  for  Organizing  Family  Social 
Work,  and  is  being  followed  by  member  societies  through- 
out the  country.  And  no  case  workers  of  any  type,  in- 
cluding teachers,  can  afford  to  be  ignorant  of  the  quarterly 
entitled  Mental  Hygiene,  issued  by  the  National  Committee 
of  that  name. 

This  classification  divides  what  has  been  discussed  as 
social  mass  work  intO'  group  work  proper — with  "face-to- 
face"  or  local  community  groups— and  social  reform  work 
with  the  public  at  large.  Under  the  first  heading  it  places 
"Americanization"  activities,  work  with  communities,  com- 
munity centers,  clubs,  settlements,  playgrounds,  general 
and  industrial  recreation  work,  physical  training.  Under 
the  second,  it  places  reform  along  civic,  housing,  industrial, 
and  legislative  lines ;  publicity  and  financial  work ;  public 
health  work,  including  nursing,  tuberculosis  work,  social, 
child,  and  industrial  hygiene.  Under  research  work,  it 
places  investigation,  research,  preparation  of  surveys  and 
exhibits,  and  social  statistics.  Under  "specialties,"  it  places 
workers  whose  training  is  in  other  fields  but  who  are  em- 
ployed under  "social"  auspices — workers  in  agriculture, 
community  singing,  domestic  science,  dramatics,  eugenics, 
financial  campaigns,  administrative  heads  and  matrons  in 
institutions,  linguists,  mental  examiners,  nurses,  physicians, 
psychologists,  psychiatrists,  registrars,  secretaries,  workers 
with  special  racial  groups.  It  calls  attention  to  the  fact 
that  "There  are,  or  may  be,  executives,  organizers,  propa- 
gandists, field  workers,  publicity  and  financial  workers,  re- 
search workers,  teachers,  and  rural  and  urban  workers  in 
all  of  these  groups."  ^ 

The  classification  is  based  upon  actual  calls  for  workers 
coming  to  the  National  Social  Workers'  Exchange,  and 
covers  activities  all  loosely  included  at  the  present  time 
under  the  term   "social   work."     But  the  development   of 

'  Edith  Shatto  King.  Social  Work  as  a  Professional  Opportunity. 
Journal  of  Education,  April  29,  1920. 


SOCIAL  SERVICES  165 

social  work  as  a  profession  is  apparently  in  the  direction 
of  closer  definition  and  a  demarcation  of  cooperating  and 
progressively  socialized  fields,  somewhat  as  they  are  marked 
off  tentatively  in  the  chapters  of  this  book.  Public  health 
work,  for  instance,  although  much  of  it  was  initiated  by 
social  agencies,  is  not  to-day  primarily  a  field  of  social  work. 
Community  and  civic  work  in  their  various  forms  are  as- 
suming an  independent  status.  Industry  is  repudiating  the 
term  "welfare  work."  In  fact,  practically  all  forms  of 
group  work  are  being  more  and  more  carried  on  under  the 
auspices  of  the  people  concerned  or  at  least  under  the  name 
of  the  special  object  in  view.  In  case  work,  distinguishing 
terms  are  being  applied.  Before  long,  we  may  have  as 
many  kinds  of  social  worker  as  there  are  kinds  of  engineer 
and  with  qualifying  words  as  commonly  used.  In  the 
future,  social  workers  may  be  recognized  as  specialists  in 
the  social  relations  of  individuals  or  groups,  and,  as  such, 
be  attached  to  organizations  and  institutions  of  many  types, 
rather  than  to  "social  agencies,"  or  be  retained  as  consult- 
ants. Hospital  social  workers,  visiting  teachers,  are  now  so 
attached.  Separate  "social  service  agencies"  may  become 
social  research  bureaus,  information  services,  and  services 
of  consultation  and  audit,  called  in  to  plan  for  satisfactory 
social  relations  in  any  kind  of  public  or  private  enterprise 
and  to  examine  periodically  their  success  in  operation. 
Such  expert  services  are  common  on  the  material  side  in 
commerce  and  industry,  and  are  now  being  extensively  es- 
tablished to  deal  with  problems  of  labor  management,  the 
new  "industrial  relations"  services.  All  this  means  that 
the  human  aspects  of  any  situation  are  coming  to  be  con- 
sidered as  an  integral  and  not  a  supplementary  and  external 
part  of  the  handling  of  that  situation.  To  maintain  the 
professional  standards  of  social  work,  Professor  Todd  urges 
that  "time  ought  to  be  definitely  allowed  in  a  worker's 
schedule  for  periodical  checking  up.  Disinterested  experts 
should  be  called  in  occasionally  as  auditors  are  in  business 
or  municipal  research  experts  in  public  affairs,  or  as  the 
Life  Extension  Institute  proposes  for  its  members,  for  a 
sympathetic  stock  taking  of  our  technical  and  spiritual  re- 
sources.    Teachers  of  methods  of  social  work  should  in- 


1 66       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

elude  ways  of  self-testing  and  analysis  which  can  be  used 
as  barometers."  ^ 

If  systematic  preparation  and  continued  self-improve- 
ment of  its  practitioners  are  essential  marks  of  a  profes- 
sion, social  work  is  well  on  its  way  to  that  title,  although 
it  has  not  yet  reached  the  standards  of  medicine,  law,  and 
engineering.  It  was  not  until  1904  that  the  first  full-time 
training  school  of  social  work  was  established,  the  New 
York  School  of  Philanthropy — lately  changing  its  name  to 
the  New  York  School  of  Social  Work.  Its  course  was  at 
first  one  year  in  length,  extended  in  191 1  to  two  years,  and 
based  at  least  nominally  upon  college  graduation  or  its 
equivalent.  There  are  five  other  independent  schools  of 
social  work,  situated  in  Boston,  Chicago,  Philadelphia,  Rich- 
mond, and  St.  Louis.  Alost  of  them  have  affiliations  with 
adjacent  universities  and  colleges.  Higher  academic  institu- 
tions have  been  steadily  developing  their  graduate  and  under- 
graduate courses  in  the  social  sciences,  and  several  of  them 
have  established  professional  schools  of  social  work.  The 
six  independent  schools  and  nine  universities  and  colleges 
have  organized  an  Association  of  Training  Schools  for  Pro- 
fessional Social  Work  with  the  purpose  of  further  develop- 
ing standards  of  training.  There  is  greatly  increased  atten- 
tion to  supervised  field  work  as  a  necessary  part  of  training, 
and  to  social  research  and  social  publicity.  Institutions  em- 
phasizing these  aspects  of  training  have  come  into  exist- 
ence: the  New  School  for  Social  Research  in  New  York; 
the  Carola  Woenshoffer  Graduate  School  of  Social  Econ- 
omy of  Bryn  ]\Iawr  College ;  the  Smith  College  Training 
School  for  Social  Work  at  Northampton,  Massachusetts. 

An  educational  inheritance  from  the  war  period  is  the 
policy  adopted  by  some  of  the  large  national  organizations 
of  establishing  intensive  training  systems  for  their  own 
workers,  both  as  "vestibule  schools"  and  for  those  already 
in  service.  The  most  conspicuous  example  of  this  is  the 
Department  of  Civilian  Relief  of  the  American  Red  Cross, 
which  is  continuing  its  "home  service"  work  on  a  peace- 
time basis  in  communities  without  other  social  case  work 
agencies,  and  has  made  arrangements  with  over  thirty  uni- 

*  The  Scientific  Spirit  and  Social  Work,  p.  130. 


SOCIAL  SERVICES  167 

versities  and  colleges  for  courses  ranging  from  three  months 
to  a  year  in  length,  theoretical  work  taking  one-half  the 
time,  under  the  college  department  of  sociology,  field  work 
taking  the  other  half  under  an  experienced  social  worker, 
temporarily  attached  to  the  faculty.  The  Red  Cross  like- 
wise holds  "institutes"  at  educational  institutions  for  its 
workers  in  service.  "Community  Service,  Incorporated," 
and  the  Salvation  Army  have  also  established  training  sys- 
tems. The  National  Board  of  the  Young  Women's  Chris- 
tian Associations  has  had  a  national  training  school  for  sec- 
retaries since  1908.  All  these  special  "training  systems"  are 
in  line  uith  developments  in  the  industrial  and  commercial 
fields;  but  they  are  better  adapted  to  workers  with  some 
experience  than  to  beginners. 

The  problem  of  volunteer  assistants  in  social  work  does 
not  properly  enter  into  a  discussion  of  professional  work- 
ers, except  in  connection  with  their  professional  super- 
vision and  their  value  as  a  means  of  educating  the  pubHc. 
Social  agencies  are  of  many  minds  regarding  their  efficacy 
and  economy.  There  is  much  to  be  said  for  the  position 
that  a  worker  cannot  be  a  satisfactory  volunteer  without 
some  experience  as  a  paid  worker.  Many  social  agencies, 
however,  especially  charity  organization  societies,  have  in 
the  past  made  use  of  "volunteers  in  training,"  who  were 
really  unpaid  apprentices.  The  trend  of  opinion  and  the 
best  usage  seem  to  be  in  favor  of  paying  workers  in  train- 
ing an  apprentice  or  scholarship  wage  unless  they  are  stu- 
dents in  educational  institutions  doing  the  work  as  super- 
vised field  or  practice  training,  and  sometimes  in  this  case 
also.  It  appears  to  be  generally  recognized  that  workers 
need  a  broader  background  than  that  furnished  by  any  one 
organization,  and  that  a  cooperative  training  system  involv- 
ing the  college  or  school  of  social  work  on  the  one  hand 
and  the  field  institution  or  organization  on  the  other  is 
the  wiser  arrangement.  Bryn  Mawr  College  provides  both 
unpaid  and  paid  practical  experience  for  its  graduate  stu- 
dents— unpaid  as  a  practicum  for  a  certain  number  of  hours 
each  week  during  the  college  year  and  paid  through  actual 
positions  during  the  summer  months  or  for  a  period  of 
six  months  after  an  initial  year  of  college  residence.    The 


i68       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

Smith  College  School  for  Social  Work  provides  resident 
instruction  during  two  successive  summers  and  eight  inter- 
vening months  of  supervised  practice  under  some  approved 
social  agency. 

The  part  played  by  the  college  undergraduate  course  in 
preparation  for  social  work  is  still  a  matter  of  some  differ- 
ence of  opinion.  A  large  although  dwindling  number  of 
social  workers  are  without  college  degrees,  including  some 
of  the  leaders ;  and  many  college  graduates  have  become 
social  workers  without  further  training.  But  the  pioneer 
and  experimental  period  is  over.  College  graduation,  in- 
cluding certain  specified  courses,  is  coming  to  be  a  pre- 
requisite, and  further  training  of  one,  two,  or  even  three 
years  to  be  considered  essential  to  the  highest  profes- 
sional standing.  There  are  already  correlations  between 
salary  and  the  amount  of  general  and  professional  educa- 
tion.^ 

Both  large  social  organizations  and  individual  social 
workers  filling  our  schedules  emphasize  these  requirements. 
A  metropolitan  family  case  work  society  in  the  east  says: 
"Our  experience  leads  us  rarely  to  engage  a  case  worker 
or  executive  who  is  not  college  trained.  We  employ  many 
graduates  of  the  schools  of  social  work;  and  give  them 
the  preference." 

A  similar  society  in  the  Middle  West  says :  "We  are  put- 
ting forth  every  effort  to  employ  in  the  responsible  position 
of  district  visitor  only  college  women,  and  also  in  addition, 
college  women  who  have  had  the  technical  school  training, 
such  as  the  School  of  Civics,  etc.  We  find  that  very  few 
women  who  have  not  had  college  training  or  at  least  some 
portion  of  a  college  course  have  a  sufficiently  trained  mind 
to  be  valuable  in  social  case-work.  The  technical  school 
is  the  sine  qua  non  of  success  in  this  work." 

The  American  Red  Cross  says :  "Home  service  workers 
need  a  good  general  educational  background — a  college 
course  and  then  a  professional  course  of  a  year  or  longer. 
College  women  are  given  preference  in  professional  posi- 
tions." 

*  See  Expenditures  and  Salaries  of  Case  Workers.  The  Family. 
March,  April,  1920. 


SOCIAL  SERVICES  169 

A  national  society  says :  "College  training  or  the  equiva- 
lent is  practically  a  necessity." 

A  state  child  welfare  agency  says :  "We  would  rather 
employ  college  women  than  non-college  women." 

Leading  women  social  workers,  some  of  whom  lament 
their  own  lack  of  college  and  professional  training,  give 
advice  of  the  same  nature : 

"Prepare  first  by  a  college  course ;  then  by  a  course  in  a 
school  of  social  work." 

"Take  very  thorough  university  and  school  of  .civics  train- 
ing, stressing  sociology,  economics,  and  applied  psychology." 

"Secure  college  training  plus  training  in  some  school  of 
social  work  with  two  or  three  years  of  practical  experi- 
ence." 

"Take  special  training,  and  take  first  a  position  as  assist- 
ant to  an  efficient  secretary." 

Higher  education  to-day  is  drawing  a  clear  although  not 
rigid  distinction  between  undergraduate  work  as  liberal  and 
pre-professional  and  graduate  work  as  specialized  and  pro- 
fessional. (See  Chapters  XX  and  XXI.)  Most  professional 
occupations,  including  social  work,  are  following  the  lead 
of  medicine  and  specifying  certain  undergraduate  courses 
as  "pre-professional"  to  their  particular  type  of  training. 
The  head  of  a  school  of  social  work  not  long  ago  prepared 
the  following  statement  of  training  recommended  as  de- 
sirable for  social  workers:  "(i)  College  education  or  its 
equivalent.  Desirable  preparation  in  the  undergraduate 
work,  looking  toward  vocational  training,  includes  courses 
in  social  economics,  political  science,  biology,  psychology. 
It  is  assumed,  of  course,  that  there  will  be  good  training 
also  in  the  use  of  English.  The  above  is  all  pre-vocational 
training.  (2)  Vocational  training  should  include  at  least 
one  year's  work  in  a  professional  school  which  should  in- 
clude courses  in  statistics,  social  case  work,  community 
work,  and  a  substantial  amount  of  supervised  field- 
work." 

There  are  educators  who  think  that  only  social  observa- 
tion and  reporting  should  be  done  by  students  during  the 
undergraduate  course ;  that  field  work  and  practice  work 
may  be  profitably  undertaken  only  by  graduate  students  of 


I 


I 

170       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

greater  maturity  with  the  background  of  a  liberal  educa- 
tion and  under  the  supervision  of  especially  equipped  teach- 
ers whose  work  is  so  arranged  that  they  have  time  and 
strength  for  intensive  instruction  and  field  direction  of 
small  groups.^ 

There  are  other  educators  who  think  that  mere  observa- 
tion is  too  passive  and  unselective  a  process,  and  that  un- 
dergraduates in  their  last  two  years  of  college  work  and  in 
advanced  courses  may  profitably  begin  to  study  social  situ- 
ations and  data  at  first  hand  and  to  plan  courses  o-f  action 
in  relation  thereto.  But  the  purpose  of  undergraduate 
field  work  is  preliminary  and  initiatory,  to  show  the  range 
of  materials  and  to  open  up  methods  of  dealing  with 
them.  Its  object  is  to  establish  first  contacts,  to  give  a 
certain  orientation  wdth  regard  to  a  profession,  not  to 
train  for  that  profession.  Since  it  must  always  be  kept 
primarily  educational,  it  is  limited  chiefly  to  investigation 
and  to  certain  forms  of  group  work.  It  can  bring  the  stu- 
dent to  a  first-hand  realization  of  the  need  for  case  work 
and  to  the  study  of  its  requirements.  But  it  can  hardly 
with  fairness  embark  upon  its  difficult  and  delicate  practice. 

Apart  from  term-time  observation  and  field  work  in 
connection  with  college  courses,  the  undergraduates  of  to- 
day are  being  given  various  opportunities  to  make  prelimi- 
nary contacts  with  the  practice  of  social  work  through  ex- 
cursions, visits,  and  conferences  during  ithe  Christmas, 
spring,  or  summer  vacations,  or  through  what  are  coming 
to  be  called  "student  vacation  apprenticeships" — positions 
of  a  routine  and  sub-professional  character  in  social 
agencies — settlements,  vacation  homes  or  camps,  child- 
pitacing  organizations,  and  so  on.  In  1917  and  1918  the 
Women's  Educational  and  Industrial  Union  of  Boston  ar- 
ranged a  three  or  four  days'  program  of  visits  to  social 
agencies  and  institutions,  conferences,  and  talks  by  leading 
social  workers  for  selected  undergraduates  of  the  women's 
colleges.  Since  1917,  the  Charity  Organization  Society  of 
New  York  has  invited  small  groups  of  not  more  than  ten 

*  See  Bryn  Mawr  College  Announcements  (1919-1920).  Carola 
Woerishoffer,  graduate  Department  of  Social  Economy  and  Social 
Research,  pp.  5-6. 


SOCIAL  SERVICES  171 

college  students,  both  men  and  women,  to  spend  a  month 
of  the  summer  as  its  guests,  living  in  settlement  houses  and 
carrying  out  a  program  of  visits,  discussions,  and  super- 
vised field  work  under  the  district  secretaries  of  the  society. 
The  Young  Men's  Christian  Association  began  a  similar 
experiment  before  the  war,  and  in  1919  renewed  it  as 
part  of  a  definite  "Make  Your  Summer  Count"  compaign 
in  the  colleges.  Social  institutions  of  various  kinds,  hospi- 
tals, children's  homes,  reformatories,  are  inviting  students 
to  spend  their  short  vacations  with  them;  the  college  settle- 
ments have  long  done  this  for  women  students  of  their  sup- 
porting colleges.  The  Intercollegiate  Community  Service 
Association,  with  chapters  in  twenty  eastern  colleges  and 
universities,  sub-chapters  in  forty  girls'  schools,  and  two 
organizing  secretaries  working  with  undergraduates,  is  ac- 
tively engaged  in  making  arrangements  for  these  "student 
vacation  apprenticeships."  This  movement  is  bound  to 
develop ;  but  it  should  never  be  lost  sight  of  that  such  work 
is  not  professional  training  proper  but  a  mode  of  making 
preliminary  contacts  and  testing  one's  own  inclination  and 
aptitude  for  a  given  profession. 

The  new  professional  emphasis  in  social  work  may  be  at 
first  discouraging  to  women  who  have  been  in  the  habit  of 
thinking  that  in  This  field,  as  in  teaching,  no  preparation  is 
necessary  beyond  the  college  course,  and  in  some  cases  not 
even  that.  But  neither  in  teaching  nor  in  social  work  is 
this  longer  true.  In  both  fields,  however,  it  is  not  a  serious 
disadvantage,  if  financial  conditions  require  it,  to  spend  a 
year  or  two  as  sub-professional  workers  and  then  to  enter 
upon  professional  training.  There  are  also  enlarging  op- 
portunities for  carrying  on  paid  work  and  professional  train- 
ing at  the  same  time,  through  afternoon  or  summer  courses, 
ahhough  this  makes  heavy  and  prolonged  demands  upon 
time  and  strength.  Prospective  doctors  and  lawyers  are 
frequently  obliged  to  defer  their  professional  courses  for 
several  years  while  they  secure  the  money  necessary 
through  other  work  which  usually  does  not  bear  upon  their 
professional  careers  as  directly  as  teachers  and  social  work- 
ers may  make  theirs. 

Scholarships  and  fellowships  for  training  in  social  work 


172       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

are  offered  by  various  institutions  and  organizations,  and 
need  to  be  increased  both  in  number  and  amount. 

An  adequate  fellowship  in  these  days  should  carry  a  sti- 
pend of  not  less  than  a  thousand  dollars  and  preferably  of 
fifteen  hundred,  although  few  at  present  reach  these  amounts. 
Many  university  fellowships  may  be  used  for  graduate  study 
in  the  social  sciences ;  some  are  so  designated.  The  schools 
of  social  work  offer  a  limited  number  of  fellowships.  The 
New  York  School,  for  instance,  announces  four  of  the 
value  of  $850,  including  $150  for  tuition.  The  Intercolle- 
giate Community  Service  Association  continues  the  practice 
of  the  College  Settlements  Association,  and  offers  several 
partial  fellowships  of  $450  to  graduates  of  contributing 
member  colleges.  The  \Vomen's  Educational  and  Indus- 
trial Union  has  long  offered  three  fellowships  of  $500  in 
social-economic  research.  The  Association  of  Collegiate 
Alumna  and  certain  independent  settlements  also  provide 
social  fellowships.  The  Students'  Aid  Societies  of  both 
Smith  and  Vassar  administer  vocational  fellowships  of 
$500,  which  may  be  used  by  graduates  preparing  for  social 
service.  These  fellowships  all  require  college  graduation 
with  pre-professional  courses  in  economics  and  sociology; 
some  of  them  require  in  addition  one  year  of  graduate  work 


I 


CHAPTER  X 

SOCIAL    SERVICES  :    II 

Social  work  follows  teaching  and  nursing  in  the  num- 
bers of  women  engaged  in  it.  Although  there  are  no  ex- 
act figures,  it  is  probably  safe  to  say  that  there  are  between 
ten  and  twenty  thousand  social  workers  in  the  United 
States,  of  whom  seventy-five  per  cent  are  women.  In  the 
1910  census,  where  persons  in  this  occupation  appeared  only 
under  "semi-professional  pursuits"  as  "rehgious  and  char- 
ity workers"  and  "keepers  of  charitable  and  penal  institu- 
tions," women  were  fifty-six  per  cent  of  the  total  number. 
A  recent  study  of  positions  in  social  work  in  Minneapolis  ^ 
shows  a  distribution  of  302  women  and  87  men,  or  71.2  per 
cent  women.  Of  88  graduates- of  the  two-year  course  of  the 
New  York  School  of  Social  Work,  72,  or  81.9  per  cent  are 
women.  These  figures  cover  the  war  period,  when  few 
young  men  were  available  and  are  probably  higher  than 
normal. 

The  demand  for  adequately  trained  social  workers,  both 
men  and  women,  has  been  greatly  increased  because  of  the 
new  social  conditions  and  new  sense  of  social  responsi- 
bility arising  out  of  the  war,  and  also  because  of  the  con- 
tinuance of  national  war-time  social  agencies,  such  as  the 
Red  Cross  home  service  and  Community  Service,  Incor- 
porated, the  outgrowth  of  the  War-Camp  Community  Serv- 
ice. There  is  a  shortage  of  workers ;  and  many  organiza- 
tions are  carrying  on  systematic  and  frequently  overlapping 
recruiting  in  the  colleges. 

It  is  undoubtedly  desirable  that  the  numbers  of  men  and 
women  in  social  work  should  be  more  nearly  equal.  The 
work  with  soldiers  and  sailors  and  the  new  importance  of 

^Positions  in  Social  Work  in  Minneapolis  (1919). 

173 


174        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 


I 


community  work  are  fortunately  turning  the  attention  of 
young  men  toward  the  profession.  While  on  the  whole  so- 
cial work  offers  a  freer  opportunity  to  persons  of  ability 
and  training  irrespective  of  sex  than  any  other  profession, 
it  betrays  the  tendency  so  strongly  marked  in  education,  of 
assigning  administrative  and  "group  work''  positions  to 
men  and  "case  work"  positions  to  women. 

In  Minneapolis,  31.2  per  cent  of  the  men  studied  were 
general  executives  of  agencies  and  only  7.2  per  cent  of  the 
women;  18.5  per  cent  of  the  men  were  heads  of  depart- 
ments within  agencies  and  9.2  per  cent  of  the  women; 
9.3  per  cent  of  the  men  were  case  workers  or  investiga- 
tors and  19.6  per  cent  of  the  women.  In  actual  numbers, 
the  distribution  of  men  and  women  in  executive  positions 
was  more  nearly  even :  twenty-seven  men  general  execu- 
tives and  twenty-two  women ;  sixteen  men  heads  of  depart- 
ments and  twenty-eight  women.  The  larger  proportion  of 
the  men  in  important  positions  is  to  a  considerable  extent  1| 
accounted  for  by  the  fact  that  of  the  workers  reporting 
education,  71  per  cent  of  the  men  are  college  graduates] 
and  only  38.8  per  cent  of  the  women.  Thorough  profes- 
sional equipment  on  the  part  of  women  will  increase  their! 
representation  in  social  leadership.  Many  already  hold] 
distinguished  posts. 

In  fact,  social  work  of  the  modern  type  makes  a  serious' 
appeal  to  young  women  of  good  native  ability,  solid  prepa- 
ration, wide  outlook,  resourcefulness,  and  courage.  It  means  i 
having  a  hand  in  the  making  of  the  social  order  and  the 
making  of  individuals.     It  calls   for  people  with  a  grasp 
of  the  motives  governing  social  and  political  action  and  of  J 
the  springs  of  individual  conduct,  with  a  knowledge  of  his- 
torical  and   racial   backgrounds   and   an   understanding   ofj 
workable  methods  of  progress.    The  modern  social  worker] 
must  have  a  genuine  and  unsentimental  liking  for  people] 
and  a  respect  for  them  and  their  reticences;  an  "ability  to 
discern  the  great  from  the  trivial";  a  sense  of  humor;  and 
a  sturdy  belief  in  the  possibilities  of  group  intelligence  and  I 
good  will.     There  is  no  room  left  for  vaguely  benevolent 
persons,   young  or  old,   nor   for   "professional   uplifters." 
Neither  can  social  workers  ascribe  to  themselves  any  su- 


SOCIAL  SERVICES  175 

perior  virtue.  As  Dr.  Cabot  says,  they  need  "all  the  vir- 
tues no  more  and  no  less  than  the  railroad  man,  the  farmer, 
or  the  shopkeeper."  But  they  do  need  disinterestedness 
and  social  imagination.  Every  prospective  social  worker 
should  read  Professor  Todd's  chapter  on  "The  Adventur- 
ous Attitude  in  Social  Work."  ^ 

Whatever  their  affiliations,  social  workers  may  be  grouped 
as  executives,  supervisors  and  teachers,  case  or  service 
workers,  publicity  and  financial  workers,  and  research 
workers.  Executive  workers  may  be  heads  of  institutions, 
of  public  departments  or  bureaus,  of  voluntary  organiza- 
tions, and  of  subdivisions  of  these  bodies.  They  may  be 
organizing  or  regional  field  secretaries.  Field  supervisors 
and  district  secretaries  are  of  course  also  executives ;  but 
the  growing  emphasis  upon  supervised  practice  work  and 
training  in  service  as  essential  parts  of  professional  prepa- 
ration leads  us  to  group  them  rather  with  teachers.  Accord- 
ing to  present  thinking,  every  supervisor  must  be  a  teacher 
and  every  teacher  to  some  extent  a  supervisor.  Universi- 
ties and  colleges  are  calling  for  a  new  type  of  instructor 
who  shall  be  both  a  doctor  of  philosophy  in  the  social  sci- 
ences and  also  an  experienced  social  worker,  and  thus 
able  to  conduct  advanced  courses  for  small  groups  of  gradu- 
ate students  and  to  supervise  their  related  field  work.  It 
is  difficult  to  find  people  with  this  double  equipment,  and 
they  are  in  great  demand.  But  they  are  being  developed 
through  the  cooperative  training  systems  of  educational  in- 
stitutions and  social  agencies.  Both  teachers  and  social 
workers  would  profit  from  the  devising  of  some  plan 
whereby  members  of  each  group  might  gain  experience  in 
the  field  of  the  other.  Many  teachers  have  become  social 
workers.^  Social  workers  would  learn  much  from  a  period 
of  teaching.  A  sojourn  as  teacher  in  a  rural  school  is  espe- 
cially commended  to  the  city-trained  social  worker  who 
blithely  undertakes  "social  service"  in  a  country  commu- 
nity. University  schools  of  social  work  and  schools  of  edu- 
cation are  beginning  to  have  more  to  do  with  each  other 

*  The  Scientific  Spirit  and  Social  Work,  Chap.  8. 
'See  David  Holbrook,  The  Teacher  Who  Came  Back.     The  Fan' 
ily,  February,  1921. 


176       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

through  courses  in  mental  tests  and  vocational  guidance; 
and  this  cooperation  might  well  be  extended. 

In  social  agencies  and  institutions  themselves,  the  educa- 
tional value  of  the  "staff  meeting"  is  becoming  widely  rec- 
ognized. The  younger  and  less  experienced  workers  attend 
these  meetings  as  hearers  and  reporters  of  case  and  field 
data,  and  learn  through  actual  participation  the  priceless 
lessons  of  the  small  face-to-face  group  as  an  instrument 
for  checking  fact  and  theory,  for  "pooling"  opinions,  and 
for  shaping  policies  and  programs.  It  is  hardly  less  useful 
to  workers  of  long  experience.  Some  social  agencies  are 
including  in  their  staffs  "educational  directors"  like  those 
employed  by  department  stores',  public  utility  companies,  and 
other  commercial  organizations.  This  is  an  admirable  policy 
where  large  numbers  of  young  workers  are  employed,  for 
social  agencies  have  been  not  the  least  among  offenders  in 
the  matter  of  exploitation. 

Beginners  and  workers  under  supervision  serve  as  case- 
workers, field  workers,  junior  social  workers,  visitors, 
agents,  assistants.  They  are  "learners  in  service"  or  "serv- 
ice workers,"  apprentices  or  journeymen  in  the  occupation 
of  social  work.  In  commercial  terminolog}',  they  may  be 
called  the  "sales  force"  of  an  organization,  making  the 
actual  contacts  with  individuals  or  groups.  In  medical 
terminology,  they  may  be  called  the  "internes"  or  assistant 
practitioners.  It  is  coming  to  be  expected  that  they  should 
have  had  at  least  a  year  of  professional  training,  and  should 
be  appointed  at  first  on  probation.  As  in  medicine,  "case 
work"  in  theory  and  practice  is  fundamental  to  all  forms  of 
social  work,  and  is  required  in  the  first  year  of  professional 
training,  whatever  the  vocational  specialization  of  the  sec- 
ond year.  In  the  past,  workers  without  this  training  at  a 
school  have  sought  to  secure  it  through  volunteer  or  ex- 
tremely low-paid  service  with  "case  work  agencies,"  particu- 
larly the  "charity  organization  societies."  But  this  practice 
has  depressed  standards  of  training  and  salary  for  all  social 
workers,  and  has  led  to  a  stream  of  transient  workers  in 
these  organizations  and  consequently  to  an  abnormally  high 
"labor  turnover."  ^     Nowadays  it  is  recognized  that  "fam- 

^  See  Todd.     Chapter  7.    The  Labor  Turnover  in  Social  Agencies. 


SOCIAL  SERVICES  177 

ily  case  work"  is  a  professional  field  by  itself,  and  that 
general  acquaintance  with  its  methods  and  those  of  other 
types  of  case  work  may  preferably  be  secured  as  a  part  of 
supervised  practice  under  the  control  of  the  professional 
school.  More  intensive  case  work  training  should  be  se- 
cured through  positions  as  "learners  in  service"  with  agen- 
cies that  recognize  their  educational  obligations  to  their 
workers,  and  make  explicit  provisions  for  training.  The 
selection  of  the  agency  with  which  a  beginner  identifies 
herself  is  a  matter  of  the  highest  importance.  A  list  of 
agencies  providing  valuable  training  might  well  be  com- 
piled. Such  positions  should  carr}^  a  "scholarship"  salary 
of  not  less  than  a  thousand  dollars  a  year,  to  avoid  all 
danger  of  exploiting  volunteer  workers.  But  they  should 
be  given  only  to  properly  qualified  and  carefully  selected 
persons,  and  be  held  for  not  longer  than  a  year  on  this 
basis. 

Professional  publicity  and  financial  workers  are  in- 
creasingly employed  by  social  organizations,  and  the  range 
and  techniques  of  such  work  have  been  enormously  devel- 
oped by  the  war  with  its  "drives"  and  "campaigns"  for  all 
sorts  of  causes  and  its  innumerable  "publicity  services"  and 
systems  of  propaganda.  Social  workers  have  a  moral  ob- 
ligation to  distinguish  clearly  between  legitimate  and  illegiti- 
mate uses  of  these  new  methods  in  the  furtherance  of  their 
special  activities.  There  is  some  difference  of  opinion  as 
to  whether  social  publicity  can  be  best  conducted  by  people 
whose  primary  training  is  in  journalism  and  advertising 
with  a  secondary  knowledge  of  social  work  or  by  profes- 
sional social  workers  who  have  acquired  a  knowledge  of 
publicity  methods  and  have  aptitude  in  this  direction.^  The 
second  view  seems  to  be  more  generally  held.  Publicity 
and  financial  workers  may  be  regularly  attached  to  social 
organizations  or  may  be  temporarily  employed  to  conduct 
special  campaigns.  Usually  only  experienced  workers  are 
engaged ;  but  social  executives  are  beginning  to  look  for 
promising  candidates  on  their  own  staffs  and  to  give  them 
special  opportunities  for  training.     It  is  reported  that  the 

*  See  Clare  M.  Tousley.  Publicity  in  Case  Work.  The  Family. 
April,  1920. 


178       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

New  York  School  of  Social  Work  is  to  offer  a  course  in 
social  publicity.  The  Survey  has  carried  the  announcements 
of  a  woman  consulting  expert  in  social  advertising  and  of 
several  bureaus  of  social  information  and  finance. 

Social  investigators  and  research  workers  have  never 
been  so  much  in  demand,  and  the  number  and  variety  of 
opportunities  are  likely  to  increase  rather  than  to  diminish. 
The  universities  and  the  schools  of  social  work  oiifer  courses 
in  the  techniques  of  collecting,  organizing,  and  presenting 
social  data,  including  work  in  statistics  and  graphics  and 
the  actual  field  study  of  a  special  problem.  The  line  be- 
tween investigation  and  research  is  difficult  to  draw ;  but 
the  first  term  is  commonly  applied  to  the  collection  of  data 
in  the  field  under  direction ;  the  second  to  the  planning  and 
interpreting  the  results  of  an  inquiry.  Certain  social  agen- 
cies maintain  research  departments  or  exist  primarily  for 
research ;  but  the  tendency  is  growing  to  call  in  experts 
for  special  studies  and  surveys  or  to  have  them  made  vin- 
der  the  auspices  of  some  of  the  great  social  foundations. 
The  Russell  Sage  Foundation  has  its  department  of  sur- 
veys and  exhibits,  and  is  inaugurating  a  study  of  education 
and  training  for  social  work ;  the  Carnegie  Foundation  has 
recently  completed  a  study  of  methods  of  "Americaniza- 
tion" ;  the  Rockefeller  Foundation  is  financing  a  study  of 
education  for  public  health  nursing;  the  Tuberculosis  Asso- 
ciation and  the  Metropolitan  Life  Insurance  Company  are 
continuing  their  tuberculosis  study  and  demonstration  in 
Framingham.  Directors  of  social  research  are  persons  of 
long  training  and  wide  reputation ;  but  young  workers  may 
gain  invaluable  experience  as  investigators  and  assistants. 
Opportunities  both  permanent  and  temporary  may  be  found 
under  the  federal  government,  especially  in  the  Children's 
Bureau  and  the  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics,  and  also  in 
state  and  city  departments.  They  are  also  to  be  found 
with  many  voluntary  social  organizations  and  to  an  increas- 
ing extent  with  other  organizations  concerned  with  the  so- 
cial aspects  of  their  own  activities.  Social  statisticians 
form  a  recognized  group.  Directors  and  preparers  of 
social  exhibits  stand  on  the  border-line  of  social  research 
and  social  publicity. 


II 


SOCIAL  SERVICES  179 

The  whole  matter  of  methods  of  securing  employment 
and  workers  is  now  under  active  consideration  in  the  field 
of  social  work  as  in  other  fields.  The  National  Social 
Workers'  Exchange  in  New  York,  established  in  191 7  and 
maintained  on  a  cooperative  basis  by  social  agencies  and 
individual  social  workers,  is  doing  much  to  reduce  waste- 
ful and  haphazard  methods,  and  is  working  out  provisions 
for  information,  job  analysis,  and  recruiting,  as  well  as 
for  placement.  The  schools  of  social  work  and  the  ap- 
pointment bureaus  of  colleges  and  universities  take  an 
active  interest  in  securing  positions  for  their  gradu- 
ates. The  bureaus  of  occupations  for  trained  women  are 
of  assistance.  Social  agencies  are  establishing  well  organ- 
ized personnel  bureaus,  cooperating  with  educational  insti- 
tutions and  professional  employment  agencies.  These 
bureaus  are  attempting  to  study  systematically  their  em- 
ployment needs  and  requirements,  to  reduce  their  labor 
turnover,  and  to  develop  higher  standards  among  social 
organizations  with  respect  to  the  taking  of  workers  from 
one  another.^  There  is  still  room  for  individual  applica- 
tion backed  by  a  good  preliminary  letter  asking  for  an  in- 
terview. Occasionally  positions  are  secured  by  advertise- 
ments in  the  Survey  and  other  periodicals  read  by  social 
executives.  Common  standards  to  be  applied  to  the  recruit- 
ing of  young  workers  through  the  colleges  are  still  to  be 
worked  out.  In  this  matter,  the  Intercollegiate  Community 
Service  Association  and  the  National  Social  Workers'  Ex- 
change are  cooperating. 

The  salary  situation  in  social  work  is  at  present  as  acute 
as  in  teaching,  and  is  similarly  under  active  discussion,  in- 
quiry, and  revision.  In  such  a  period  of  fluctuation,  it  is 
impossible  to  make  statements  of  any  permanent  validity. 
But  here,  as  in  all  salaried  occupations,  the  pressure  of  the 
high  cost  of  living  is  forcing  salaries  upward  and  leading 
to  much  needed  drafting  of  salary  schedules  and  working 
out  of  just  and  public  systems  of  promotion.  In  the  larger 
cities,  where  social  workers  have  been  concentrated,  their 
salaries  have  as  a  rule  been  even  lower  than  those  of  teach- 

^  See  Joanna  C.  Colcord.  On  the  Hiring  Line.  The  Family. 
April,  1920. 


i8o       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

ers  in  the  same  place ;  in  many  cases,  well  below  a  living 
wage.  It  must  be  admitted,  however,  that  their  professional 
equipment  has  often  likewise  been  lower.  In  both  teaching 
and  social  work,  low  salary  standards  are  an  index  of  im- 
perfect professional  development. 

Several  investigations  of  salaries  paid  in  social  work  have 
recently  been  made.  In  the  Minneapolis  study  already  men- 
tioned, carried  on  during  the  last  four  months  of  1918,  the 
median  salary  for  87  men  was  found  to  be  $1,842.85;  for 
302  women,  $966.  Forty-two  and  three-tenths  per  cent  of 
the  men  received  $2,000  and  over;  one  and  five-tenths  per 
cent  of  the  women.  Only  twenty  women  received  $1,600 
and  over,  while  248  or  over  82  per  cent  received  less  than 
$900.  A  comparison  of  the  salaries  of  social  workers, 
teachers,  and  librarians  in  Minneapolis  showed  that  in  1918 
29.3  per  cent  of  social  workers  received  less  than  $900;  17.2 
per  cent  of  public  school  teachers;  and  42.6  per  cent  of 
public  librarians.  On  the  other  hand,  8.9  per  cent  of  social 
workers  received  over  $2,100  as  against  1.85  per  cent  of 
teachers  and  i  per  cent  of  librarians.  Since  these  figures 
were  reported  both  teachers  and  librarians  have  received 
increases  of  salary. 

The  study  of  expenditures  and  salaries  of  case  workers 
made  by  the  National  Society  for  Organizing  Family  Social 
Work  during  the  first  six  months  of  1919^  covered  ninety- 
seven  workers,  presumably  all  women,  from  various  parts 
of  the  country.  The  figures  are  too  small  to  warrant  general 
conclusions.  The  median  yearly  salary  was  $970.56.  Thir- 
ty-nine college  graduates  received  a  median  yearly  salary  of 
$1,010;  15  graduates  of  schools  of  social  work  a  median  sal- 
ary of  $1,275.  Reports  of  yearly  expenditure  showed  that 
only  those  who  lived  at  home  or  were  graduates  of  schools  of 
social  work  earned  more  than  they  spent.  The  median 
yearly  expenditure,  $1,114.32,  is  slightly  lower  than  the 
dreary  minimum  budget  of  $1,151.15  estimated  by  the  Bu- 
reau of  Labor  Statistics  as  sufficient  to  maintain  a  woman 
government  clerk  at  a  "level  of  health  and  decency."  ^ 

More  encouraging  are  studies  made  by  the  New  York 

'  The  Family.     March  and  April,  1920. 
'  Monthly  Labor  Review.    January,  1920. 


SOCIAL  SERVICES  i8i 

School  of  Social  Work  ^  of  recent  salaries  received  by  its 
graduates.  In  1918  the  average  salary  for  men  and  w^omen 
together  was  $1,500;  in  1919,  half  of  the  salaries  reported 
were  $1,800  and  over.  Men  graduates  reporting  salaries 
in  1919  show  a  salary  range  of  from  $1,700  to  $6,000  with 
only  one  case  at  either  extreme  and  over  two-thirds  at 
$3,000  or  more.  Forty  women  graduates  show  a  salary 
range  of  from  $840  to  $3,700  with  only  three  receiving 
less  than  $1,200  and  twelve  receiving  $2,000  and  more. 
Of  thirty-two  women  graduates  of  the  two-year  course  since 
1913,  only  five  received  initial  salaries  of  less  than  $1,000. 
The  fourteen  initial  salaries  received  in  1918  and  their  in- 
creases in  1919  are  as  follows,  the  second  figure  represent- 
ing the  salary  received  in  1919:  $1,020-$  1,500;  $1,080- 
$1,770;  $1,200-$  1,320;  $1,200-$  1, 400;  $1,200-$  1, 500; 
$1,200-$ 1, 500;  $i,200-$i,500;  $1,200-$ 1, 800;  $1,200-$ 1, 800; 
$1,200-$ 1, 800;  $1,3 50-$ 1, 500;  $1,500-$ 1, 800;  $  1 ,56o-$2,6oo ; 
$2,400-$3,7oo. 

The  committee  reporting  on  the  salaries  of  social  case 
workers  recommended  in  September,  1919,  that  a  case 
worker  who  has  had  one  year  at  a  school  of  social  work  of 
recognized  standing  or  its  equivalent  should  receive  an  in- 
itial salary  of  at  least  a  hundred  dollars  a  month,  and  that 
increases  in  the  monthly  salary  amounting  to  at  least  ten 
dollars  should  be  granted  automatically  at  six  months'  in- 
tervals until  a  definite  maximum  is  reached.  The  Minne- 
apolis report  recommends  that  "a  maximum  probationary 
period  should  be  determined,  after  which  all  workers 
should  be  paid  at  least  a  living  wage  .  .  .  and  distinctions 
should  be  drawn  between  volunteer,  probationary,  scholar- 
ship, and  permanent  positions,  and  none  but  trained  workers 
should  be  appointed  to  permanent  positions."  It  also  recom- 
mends that  conditions  of  work  should  be  standardized,  the 
policy  of  equal  pay  for  equal  work  should  be  adopted,  and 
objective  standards  for  determining  efficiency  should  be 
devised  as  a  basis  for  promotion. 

The  Bureau  of  Jewish  Social  Research  has  likewise  con- 
ducted an  inquiry  into  salaries  of  workers  in  Jewish  social 
agencies ;  and  the  Association  of  Employed  Officers  of  the 

'General  Announcement   (1920-1921). 


i82       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

Young  Women's  Christian  Associations  has  made  a  com- 
parative study  of  the  salaries  and  expenditures  of  its 
members  and  of  women  in  other  professional  groups.^  The 
present  salary  ranges  in  the  Association  are  from  $i,8oo  to 
$3,000  for  the  staiif  of  the  National  Board;  from  $1,200  to 
$2,500  for  local  general  secretaries,  with  the  median  from 
$1,600  to  $1,800;  from  $1,200  to  $1,800  for  industrial  sec- 
retaries, with  the  median  $1,300  or  $1,400;  from  $1,500  to 
$1,800  for  directors  of  international  institutes,  working 
with  foreign  women  and  girls;  from  $1,200  to  $1,600  for 
workers  in  the  girls'  work  department,  with  the  large  ma- 
jority at  $1,200.  These  last  positions  are  looked  upon  to 
some  extent  as  training  for  other  departments.  Technical 
workers  with  training  in  other  fields,  such  as  physical  and 
recreation  directors,  cafeteria  managers,  etc.,  are  paid  at 
approximately  current  rates.  These  salaries  are  likely  to 
be  revised  upward  in  the  near  future.  Salary  ranges  for 
women  in  the  Home  Service  Section  of  the  American  Red 
Cross  have  been  from  $1,200  to  $3,000  a  year.  Super- 
visors receive  from  $1,200  to  $2,000 ;  instructors  from  $1,500 
to  $2,100.  During  the  war,  the  War  and  Navy  Depart- 
ments' Commission  on  Training  Camp  Activities  paid  the 
workers  in  its  section  for  women  and  girls,  later  attached 
to  the  Interdepartmental  Social  Hygiene  Board,  from  $1,500 
to  $3,500.  District  supervisors  received  $2,500;  local  work- 
ers, $1,800;  local  assistants,  $1,500. 

Fifty  social  workers  of  various  types,  not  including  those 
dealt  with  in  preceding  chapters,  filled  our  schedules  during 
1918  and  1919.  The  salaries  reported  do  not  represent 
the  most  recent  advances,  although  some  of  them  show  the 
higher  levels  reached  in  the  war-emergency  services.  They 
range  for  all  groups  from  $840  to  $6,000,  with  a  median 
salary  of  $1,800,  and  include  workers  in  all  sections  of 
the  country,  although  the  majority  are  in  the  East.  Of  the 
fifty  workers,  18  are  general  executives — superintendents 
of  institutions,  directors  and  executive  secretaries  of  or- 
ganizations with  a  salary  range  of  from  $1,320  to  $6,000 
and  a  median  salary  of  $2,300;  11  are  departmental  execu- 
tives with  a  salary  range  of  from  $1,200  to  $3,000  and  a 
*  Unpublished. 


SOCIAL  SERVICES  183 

median  salary  of  $1,800;  three  are  field  supervisors,  with  a 
salary  range  of  from  $1,800  to  $2,500  and  a  median  salary 
of  $1,800;  12  are  case  workers  and  field  workers — proba- 
tion and  parole  officers,  policewomen,  juvenile  court  and 
child  welfare  visitors,  school  visitors,  family  visitors — with 
a  salary  range  of  from  $840  to  $1,800  and  a  median  salary 
of  $1,200;  4  are  teachers  and  editors  in  schools  of  social 
work  with  a  salary  range  of  from  $1,500  to  $4,000  and  a 
median  salary  of  $1,650;  two  are  research  workers  on  so- 
cial problems  with  salaries  of  $1,800  and  $3,000  respec- 
tively. 

Grouped  by  types  of  social  service  and  including  all 
grades  of  worker  in  each  type,  8  are  in  family  case-work — 
charity  organization  societies,  public  departments  of  charity, 
and  Red  Cross  home  service — with  a  salary  range  of  from 
$960  to  $3,000  and  a  median  salary  of  $1,885;  5  ^^^  ""^ 
children's  work  with  a  salary  range  of  from  $1,200  to  $2,500 
and  a  median  salary  of  $2,000;  13  are  in  correctional  and 
protective  work  with  a  salary  range  of  from  $840  to 
$3,500  and  a  median  salary  of  $1,800;  9  are  in  work  with 
women  and  girls — Girl  Scouts,  Young  Women's  Christian 
Associations,  League  of  Women  Workers — with  a  salary 
range  of  from  $1,200  to  $6,000  and  a  median  salary  of 
$1,800;  5  are  in  vocational  guidance  and  school  visiting 
work,  including  psychological  testing  of  school  children, 
with  a  salary  range  of  from  $900  to  $3,000  and  a  median 
salary  of  $1,200;  4  are  in  settlement  work  with  a  salary 
range  of  from  $1,000  to  $2,500-  and  a  median  salary  of 
$1,300;  7  are  in  educational,  publicity,  or  research  work 
with  a  salary  range  of  from  $1,500  to  $4,000  and  a  median 
salary  of  $1,800.  Fourteen  hold  positions  under  public 
departments,  federal,  state,  or  municipal,  with  a  salary  range 
of  from  $840  to  $3,500  and  a  median  salary  of  $1,800. 
These  include  four  women  under  the  federal  Interdepart- 
mental Social  Hygiene  Board ;  a  superintendent  of  a  state 
industrial  school  for  girls  and  a  visitor  of  paroled  girls 
from  a  similar  institution ;  a  supervisor  of  mother's  aid 
under  a  state  board  of  charity ;  a  city  overseer  of  the  poor ; 
two  executive  secretaries  of  a  city  board  of  children's  guar- 
dians and  a  city  juvenile  commission  respectively;  a  pro- 


i84       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

bation  officer  in  a  city  court  of  domestic  relations;  and 
three  policewomen  at  regular  police  salaries. 

Some  of  the  comments  are  as  follows :  "Have  an  ability 
to  get  along  with  people  and  to  put  over  programs." 

"Learn  to  do  one  thing  better  than  anybody  else  can  do 
it.     Become  an  expert.    Don't  be  a  blind  alley  worker." 

"Cultivate  a  passion  for  facts;  never  lose  your  sympathy 
for  all  that  is  human;  get  much  satisfaction  out  of  seem- 
ingly small  successes;  have  a  hobby  outside  of  social  work; 
don't  live  with  other  social  workers." 

"Social  work  needs  women  of  high  intelligence  coupled 
with  balance,  good  judgment,  a  sense  of  humor,  and  com- 
mon sense." 

"See  life  in  the  large  rather  than  in  the  small,  or  you  will 
waste  your  time  in  petty  work  rather  than  doing  the  'large 
job'  to  be  done." 

"Do  not  expect  to  become  a  social  worker  over-night." 

"Train  for  it !  'A  sweet  Christian  character  and  a  mother 
herself  are  inadequate  qualifications." 

"If  you  want  a  peaceful  routine  life,  stay  out  of  it.  If 
you  want  an  opportunity  to  exercise  initiative,  to  work  hard, 
there  is  no  better  place.  The  better  your  education,  the 
better  you  will  succeed." 


CHAPTER  XI 

PERSONNEL    SERVICES 

Personnel  service  is  a  term  which  came  into  wide- 
spread use  during  the  war,  to  a  considerable  extent  taking 
the  place  of  the  term  employment  management,  with  which 
we  were  just  becoming  famiUar.  Still  other  terms  are 
being  adopted,  so  that  parallel  departments  in  industrial, 
commercial  and  other  organizations  are  entitled  employment 
departments,  personnel  departments,  service  departments, 
and  industrial  relations  departments.  This  last  term  is 
favored  by  large  corporations  as  covering  all  activities  hav- 
ing to  do  with  employees,  including  employment,  transfer 
and  promotion,  wage-setting,  testing  and  training,  health 
and  safety,  restaurant  and  recreation  facilities,  housing  and 
transportation  of  workers,  collective  bargaining  and  shop 
government.  The  term  personnel  is  equally  inclusive,  if  less 
explicit ;  with  a  stronger  emphasis  upon  the  human  and 
psychological  elements  involved.  The  further  fact  that 
identical  terms  are  used  in  different  senses  by  different  firms 
shows  that  the  movement  is  still  in  process  of  organization 
and  development,  and  leads  to  a  good  deal  of  popular  mis- 
conception. But  personnel  service  is  a  significant  manifesta- 
tion of  the  new  spirit  in  industry  and  the  growing  under- 
standing of  the  psychology  of  human  group  relationships.^ 

Employment  or  personnel  management  has  been  so  widely 
heralded  as  a  "new  profession  for  women"  that  it  is  the 
part  of  wisdom  to  begin  this  chapter  with  a  solemn  warning 
that  it  requires  far  more  of  its  practitioners  than  a  "natural 
liking   for  people"   and   a   few   undergraduate    courses   in 

'  See  Ordway  Tcad  and  Henry  C.  Metcalf.  Personnel  Adminis- 
tration (1920).  Employment  Management  Series.  Federal  Board 
for  Vocational  Education.     Eight  Bulletins    (1920). 

185 


i86       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

"labor  problems"  and  psychology,  important  and  even  nec- 
essary as  these  are.  But  they  must  be  supplemented  by 
rigorous  special  training  and  practical  experience  of  a  kind 
new  to  most  women.  There  are  few  opportunities  for 
beginners;  and  women  must  realize  that  both  for  the  sake 
of  the  profession  and  for  the  sake  of  the  perman.ent  posi- 
tion of  women  within  it,  those  who  enter  it  to-day  should 
do  so  with  a  clear  understanding  of  its  character  and  a 
strong  sense  of  their  professional  responsibilities  and  obliga- 
tions. It  is  no  place  for  women  seeking  merely  novelty  and 
adventure. 

In  spite  of  these  warnings,  personnel  service  offers  a  real 
and  growing  opportunity  to  young  women  of  vigorous  and 
unsentimental  personality,  resourcefulness,  and  determina- 
tion. It  has  to  do  with  the  promotion  of  satisfactory  human 
relations,  the  adjustment.of  difficulties  and  grievances,  and 
the  maintenance  of  proper  standards  of  working  and  living 
— matters  with  which  women  are  supposed  to  be  especially 
qualified  to  deal.  While  there  is  a  tendency  to  employ 
women  personnel  managers  in  connection  with  women 
workers — of  whom  there  are  now  between  eleven  and  twelve 
millions  in  the  United  States,  eight  million  of  them  between 
fourteen  and  twenty-one  years  of  age — there  are  women 
successfully  handling  departments  dealing  with  both  men 
and  women  and  even  with  men  alone.  Here  as  elsewhere, 
the  really  determining  factor  should  be  ability  to  do  the 
work  and  not  sex.  There  are  various  "substitute"  or 
"allied"  occupations  through  which  women  may  test  their 
aptitude  for  personnel  work,  as  well  as  training  courses  of 
a  professional  type,  including  practice  work,  and  opportuni- 
ties to  gain  experience  as  apprentices  or  learners  in  service. 
A  period  as  an  actual  factory  operative,  saleswoman,  or 
clerk  is  fundamental  to  a  real  understanding  of  the  workers 
to  be  dealt  with.  Some  of  this  experience  may  be  gained 
during  summer  vacations. 

The  word  "personnel,"  borrowed  from  the  French,  is 
applied  to  the  group  or  groups  of  workers  belonging  to  a 
given  organization,  industrial,  commercial,  governmental, 
social,  educational.  In  a  factory  or  group  of  factories,  it 
may  be  used  with  reference  to  all  the  workers  employed  or 


PERSONNEL  SERVICES  187 

be  qualified  in  such  ways  as  shop  personnel,  office  personnel, 
sales  personnel.  During  the  war,  the  federal  departments 
and  the  great  auxiliary  organizations  like  the  American  Red 
Cross,  the  War  Camp  Community  Service,  the  two  Chris- 
tian Associations,  and  other  national  religious  societies,  all 
had  personnel  departments  or  bureaus  or  services.  The 
Report  of  the  Congressional  Joint  Commission  on  Reclassi- 
fication of  Salaries  urges  that  the  Federal  Civil  Service 
Commission  be  made  in  an  adequate  sense  a  central  per- 
sonnel agency  for  the  government.  Department  stores, 
insurance  and  telephone  companies,  banks — all  sorts  of 
organizations  employing  large  numbers  of  people — are 
establishing  special  personnel  departments  and  studying 
their  own  personnel  requirements  and  problems. 

Just  what  is  involved  in  the  occupation  or  profession  of 
personnel  management?  Dr.  Edward  D.  Jones^  says  that 
it  is  chiefly  a  question  of  the  intelligent  handling  of  the 
human  relations  which  result  from  the  normal  course  of 
business  day  by  day,  and  calls  it  a  departure  in  business 
practice.  "Hitherto,  executive  control  in  business  has  been 
exercised  through  three  main  divisions  of  administration: 
(i)  Finance — in  charge  of  a  treasurer  or  president. 
(2)  Manufacturing — in  charge  of  a  general  manager  or 
general  superintendent.  (3)  Sales — in  charge  of  a  sales 
manager.  To  these  three  divisions  industrial  enterprise  is 
now  adding  a  fourth,  i.  e.,  employment  management  or,  as 
it  is  sometimes  called,  supervision  of  personnel.  In  the 
employment  department  of  a  business  are  gathered  all  those 
activities  which  have  to  do  with  the  human  relations.  To 
bring  all  these  matters  together  under  one  head,  and  provide 
each  subsection  with  specialists  is  a  great  step  toward 
scientific  industrialism." 

So  comprehensive  a  description  explains  the  present 
tendency  to  abandon  the  term  "employment"  in  favor  of  the 
terms  "personnel"  or  "industrial  relations."  The  func- 
tions of  a  modern  personnel  department  include  far  more 
than  mere  "hiring  and  firing"  even  according  to  the  most 

^Employment  Management:  Its  Rise  and  Scope.  Employment 
Management  Series  No.  i.  {1919.)  Federal  Board  for  Vocational 
Education. 


i88       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

enlightened  methods.  In  addition  to  the  provision  of 
proper  working  conditions  and  other  provisions  for  the 
maintenance  of  efficiency  and  morale,  it  is  constantly  study- 
ing methods  and  results  as  they  affect  the  workers,  and  thus 
is  committed  to  research/  But  it  must  be  admitted  that  in 
many  organizations  the  coordination  of  all  personnel  activi- 
ties under  one  department  does  not  yet  exist.  Side  by  side 
and  more  or  less  independent  and  overlapping  are  to  be 
found  employment  departments,  "service"  or  "welfare" 
departments,  health  departments,  adjustment  departments, 
planning  or  "scientific  management"  departments.  Some  of 
these  came  into  existence  long  before  "industrial  experi- 
ence" had  "proved  the  advantage  of  a  separate  department 
to  deal  with  questions  of  personnel" ;  some  of  them  are  only 
partly  concerned  with  questions  of  personnel.  Many 
"welfare  departments"  are  still  conducted  on  a  philanthropic 
and  paternalistic  basis,  and  are  distrusted  and  resented  by 
the  workers,  who  have  had  small  share  in  planning  or 
directing  the  enterprises  designed  for  their  benefit.  Rightly 
or  wrongly,  they  are  looked  upon  as  an  effort  on  the  part 
of  the  management  to  make  people  contented  with  low 
wages  and  unsatisfactory  working  conditions.  The  dislike 
felt  for  the  terms  "welfare  work"  and  "social  work"  is  a 
sign  that  such  work  has  frequently  been  unwisely  handled, 
and  is  in  itself  a  strong  argument  for  not  regarding  person- 
nel work  in  any  of  its  subdivisions  as  a  form  of  "social 
Service,"  fundamentally  social  though  it  be  in  the  larger 
sense.  It  must  be  looked  upon  by  the  workers  as  a  part 
of  just  and  enlightened  management,  free  from  any  taint 
of  charity  or  patronage.  Similarly,  the  earlier  type  of 
"scientific  management"  in  the  form  of  time,  motion,  and 
fatigue  studies  aroused  the  deep  suspicion  of  the  workers 
as  tending  to  their  exploitation.  Modern  "job  analysis" 
and  all  forms  of  mental  and  occupational  testing  must  be 
carried  on  with  sympathetic  understanding  of  personnel 
psychology. 

These  considerations  raise  the  question  of  the  relations 
of  the  manager  of  the  personnel  department  to  the  manage- 

'  See   Tead   and    Metcalf.     Personnel   Administration,   Part   VI. 
Research. 


PERSONNEL  SERVICES  189 

ment  of  an  enterprise  on  the  one  hand  and  to  the  workers  in 
that  enterprise  on  the  other.  He  is  in  a  pecuHar  sense  an 
intermediary  between  the  two,  and  is  intimately  concerned 
with  the  maintenance  of  "group  morale."  To  do  this,  he 
must  have  the  confidence  of  both  the  staff  and  the  rank  and 
file.  The  whole  matter  is  bound  up  with  the  larger  question 
of  the  participation  of  labor  in  management.  It  is  likely 
that  he  will  be  in  some  way  jointly  selected  by  management 
and  employees,  or  that  at  least  his  appointment  will  be 
approved  by  representatives  of  the  workers.  Dr.  Jones 
says:  "Employment  supervision  represents  a  movement  in 
the  direction  of  the  democratic  shop,  in  which  a  voice  is 
given  to  labor  in  determining  working  conditions."  The 
personnel  manager  and  his  staff  are  an  essential  element  in 
the  working  out  of  systems  of  "functionalized  foreman- 
ship,"  shop  committees,  collective  bargaining,  and  labor 
adjustment.  His  weight  as  a  member  of  the  managerial 
staff  and  his  relations  with  the  planning,  production,  and 
sales  departments  still  vary  greatly  in  different  organiza- 
tions. 

In  view  of  the  wide  differences  at  present  in  the  scope, 
function,  and  importance  of  personnel  departments,  and 
the  popularity  of  the  term,  it  is  necessary  for  women  con- 
sidering positions  in  particular  departments  to  find  out  what 
they  actually  stand  for;  what  are  their  relations  to  service 
and  welfare  activities,  to  "scientific  management,"  and  to 
problems  of  labor  adjustment  and  representation.  It  is 
likewise  important  for  women  going  into  "industrial  wel- 
fare" positions  as  cafeteria  managers,  club  and  recreation 
leaders,  physicians,  nurses,  or  public  health  workers, 
"Americanization"  workers,  educational  directors,  garden 
supervisors,  home  visitors,  to  find  out  in  advance  whether 
such  work  is  carried  on  through  the  personnel  department 
and  with  the  cooperation  of  the  workers,  or  occupies  a 
detached  and  more  or  less  anomalous  position. 

It  has  been  pointed  out  that  personnel  management  is  on 
one  side  an  outgrowth  of  scientific  management  and  cost 
accounting,  leading  to  the  discovery  of  the  high  cost  of  labor 
"turnover"  or  change  in  the  personnel  of  workers,  with  a 
resulting  expense  estimated  at  from  $25  to  $75  per  persor 


I90       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

and  on  the  other,  of  the  workmen's  compensation  and 
"safety  first"  movements,  which  have  revealed  the  extent 
to  which  accidents  are  due  to  the  ignorance,  the  fatigue, 
or  the  general  dissatisfaction  of  the  worker.^  In  a  larger 
sense  it  gathers  up  and  applies  to  concrete  industrial  and 
commercial  situations  the  results  of  modern  developments 
in  vocational  education,  vocational  guidance,  applied  psy- 
chology, and  public  health.  It  has  before  it  the  task  of 
modifying  and  mitigating  the  withering  human  results  of 
excessive  specialization  of  labor.^  The  personnel  manager 
"works  ...  to  cut  down  accidents,  reduce  fatigue,  and  cure 
antagonism  of  mind.  As  a  hiring  officer  he  has  an  oppor- 
tunity to  make  vocational  guidance  more  definite  than  it 
has  yet  been,  because  he  can  supplement  the  analysis  of  the 
individual  with  a  parallel  analysis  of  jobs.  He  has  a 
powerful  motive  for  competence  in  industrial  training  work, 
for  he  graduates  his  pupils  in  rather  than  out.  His  stu- 
dents benefit  from  the  psychology  of  doing  real  work  for 
pay  in  a  real  shop."  ^ 

Personnel  managers  were  in  great  demand  during  the 
war,  when  "the  competitive  struggle  was  chiefly  to  save 
time."  Under  ordinary  conditions  it  is  rather  "to  reduce 
costs."  But  the  financial  saving  of  a  smaller  labor  turnover 
and  the  increase  in  production  due  to  well  selected  and 
satisfied  workers  have  been  so  abundantly  demonstrated  that 
personnel  management  has  become  a  firmly  established  and 
widely  recognized  profession.  There  is  every  prospect  of 
a  permanent  business  expansion  in  the  United  States ;  and 
with  the  growing  numbers  of  women  in  industrial,  clerical, 
and  professional  occupations  and  the  honorable  records  of 
certain  women  personnel  managers  in  dealing  with  men  as 
well  as  women  employees,  there  seems  no  reason  to  doubt 
that  personnel  service  will  be  a  widening  field  for  competent 
women,  although  there  has  been  a  temporary  shrinkage 
from  the  war-time  demand.  An  intensive  study  of  women 
already  in  the  field  and  of  the  distribution  of  openings  is 
greatly  needed. 

*  Employment  Management  Series  No.  I.     Federal  Board. 

*  Carleton  H.  Parker.  The  Technique  of  American  Industry. 
Atlantic  Monthly.    January,  1920. 


PERSONNEL  SERVICES  191 

The  war-emergency  intensive  courses  in  employment  man- 
agement given  at  various  universities  under  the  auspices  of 
the  War  Industries  Board  and  cooperating  government 
departments  did  much  to  develop  standards  and  techniques 
of  professional  training  for  personnel  services,  although 
they  were  only  eight  weeks  in  length  and  admitted  only 
persons  with  previous  industrial  experience  and  sent  by 
the  firms  with  which  they  were  connected.  A  preliminary 
"shop  practice"  course  was  given  at  Cleveland  for  people 
without  this  experience,  and  was  attended  by  about  fifty 
people,  mostly  women.  Women  attended  many  of  the 
regular  courses,  and  a  woman  was  director  of  the  course 
given  by  the  University  of  Washington.  Bryn  Mawr  Col- 
lege likewise  offered  a  graduate  course  of  eight  months' 
academic  work  and  three  months'  shop  practice  in  indus- 
trial supervision  and  employment  management,  making 
practice  arrangements  with  a  number  of  large  industries 
and  commercial  establishments  in  the  East.  It  is  continuing 
and  developing  this  course  on  a  permanent  basis.  Univer- 
sities and  schools  of  business  administration  are  offering 
more  extended  courses  in  personnel  management,  in- 
dustrial management,  and  applied  psychology,  including 
the  various  types  of  mental  tests,  as  well  as  fundamental 
courses  in  economics  and  sociology  essential  to  a  student 
preparing  to  enter  this  field.  Many  of  these  courses  in- 
clude observation  and  shop  practice,  sometimes  of  a  reg- 
ular apprentice  character.  A  Bureau  of  Personnel  Admin- 
istration, offering  training  courses,  was  established  in  New 
York  in  1920.  There  is  a  large  and  growing  litera- 
ture on  the  subject,  and  much  discussion.  In  1919, 
the  various  local  associations  of  employment  managers 
formed  the  National  Association  of  Employment  Managers 
open  to  qualified  men  and  women,  which  has  already  held 
two  largely  attended  conventions.  It  issues  a  monthly 
publication  entitled  Personnel,  and  has  recently  changed 
its  name  to  the  Industrial  Relations  Association.  Manv  of 
the  men  and  women  who  were  organizers  of  personnel  work 
on  a  large  scale  during  the  war  have  established  themselves 
as  personnel  and  management  consultants.  Organizations 
all  over  the  country  are  calling  upon  these  firms  to  inau- 


192        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

gurate  or  reconstruct  personnel  departments.  Women  inter- 
ested in  preparing  for  personnel  services  have  therefore 
full  access  to  information  and  training  and  many  ways  of 
discovering  their  qualifications  for  the  work. 

It  is  not  easy  to  list  these  qualifications  beyond  the  es- 
sential ones  of  courage,  a  sense  of  justice,  resourcefulness, 
and  a  practical  everyday  kind  of  democracy,  together  with 
adequate  training.  Dr.  Jones  says :  "To  summarize  the 
matter  of  qualifications  we  give  the  relative  weights 
which  a  number  of  successful  employment  managers 
have  agreed  upon  for  five  principal  factors :  Per- 
sonality, 35  per  cent;  General  industrial  experience,  25 
per  cent;  Executive  experience,  20  per  cent;  Shop  expe- 
rience (for  employment  managers  in  manufacturing  estab- 
Hshments),  15  per  cent;  Experience  with  organized  social 
movements,  5  per  cent."  ^  This  enumeration  makes  no  men- 
tion of  education,  although  high  standards  in  this  respect 
are  everywhere  emphasized.  The  growth  of  personnel  re- 
search, either  by  individual  firms,  by  firms  of  consultants, 
or  by  joint  service  bureaus  such  as  the  Retail  Research 
Association,  which  has  its  personnel  division,  creates  a  de- 
mand for  persons  wath  advanced  academic  and  professional 
equipment  along  research  lines,  including  statisticians  and 
psychologists.  The  various  bureaus  of  a  thoroughly  organ- 
ized personnel  department — "employment  proper,  adjust- 
ment, medical  service  and  compensation,  education,  social 
service,  safety,  records" — likewise  call  for  persons  of  spe- 
cial qualifications.  - 

With  regard  to  so  new  a  profession  it  is  not  easy  to  make 
statements  either  about  modes  of  securing  employment  nor 
about  salaries.  Positions  are  probably  most  frequently  se- 
cured through  institutions  giving  special  training,  through 
recommendation  by  persons  already  in  the  work,  and 
through  direct  application  backed  by  proper  evidence  of 
fitness.  Bureaus  of  occupations  have  scattering  calls.  To 
quote  Dr.  Jones  again :  "At  present  the  salaries  of  em- 
oloyment  managers — the  great  majority  of  which  probably 

^Employment  Management.     Federal  Board  for  Vocational  Edu- 
cation.   Opportunity  Monograph  No.  12  (1919). 
'Employment  Management  Series  No.  i.     Federal  Board  (1920). 


II 


PERSONNEL  SERVICES  I93 

fall  between  $2,cxx)  and  $5,000 — are  not  equal  to  those  com- 
manded by  sales  managers  and  production  engineers  of 
equal  ability.  This  discrepancy  is  due  partly  to  the  recent- 
ness  of  the  function  and  to  its  more  subtle  and  indirect  re- 
lations to  the  profit-making  process."  ^  A  firm  of  personnel 
consultants  writes :  "The  ordinary  employment  manager 
receives  from  $3,000  to  $5,000,  while  men  of  real  ability 
earn  from  $5,000  to  $25,000."  At  present  more  women  are 
assistant  employment  managers,  for  the  most  part  in  charge 
of  women  workers,  than  are  heads  of  employment  or  per- 
sonnel departments,  and  consequently  receive  lower  sal- 
aries. They  have  commonly  had  far  less  first-hand  indus- 
trial or  commercial  experience  than  men,  and  many  of  them 
are  still  in  the  position  of  learners  in  service  or  subordinate 
service  workers.  They  are  for  the  most  part  young  college 
v/omen  who  have  taken  one  or  other  of  the  war-emergency 
courses.  It  is  highly  important  for  women  just  at  this  time 
in  a  new  profession  to  measure  themselves  by  the  best 
.-tandards  not  only  with  respect  to  salaries  but  with  respect 
to  preparation,  experience,  and  responsibilities  assumed. 

Of  thirty-eight  organizations  filling  our  employers'  sched- 
ule, twenty  are  industrial,  eleven  commercial,  and  seven  so- 
cial or  educational.  Twenty-two  report  unmistakable  per- 
sonnel departments ;  six,  apparent  departments ;  and  ten, 
no  departments.  Seventeen  out  of  the  twenty  industrial 
firms,  which  include  some  of  the  largest  and  most  pro- 
gressive in  the  East  and  the  Middle  West,  have  departments, 
the  heads  of  which  describe  themselves  variously  as  em- 
ployment manager,  personnel  secretary,  service  secretary, 
manager  of  employment  and  service  department,  manager 
of  industrial  relations  department.  Five  managers  report- 
ing are  women.  The  industries  include  firms  manufactur- 
ing chemicals,  clothing,  food  products,  metal  products,  opti- 
cal products,  paper  products,  and  a  large  mail-order  house 
doing  both  manufacturing  and  merchandising.  The  four 
commercial  personnel  departments  are  in  department  stores, 
banks,  and  a  great  public  utility  system.  Of  the  educational 
and  social  organizations,  the  American  Red  Cross  has  a 

^Employment  Manaqcmcnt.  Federal  Board  for  Vocational  Edu- 
cation.   Opportunity  Monograph  No.  12  (1919). 


194       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

central  personnel  service  having-  to  do  chiefly  with  clericr.l 
workers  and  special  personnel  services  in  its  several  depart- 
ments and  divisions.  A  great  middle  western  charities  or- 
ganization reports  that  the  assistant  superintendent  har 
functions  similar  to  those  of  an  employment  manager. 

Of  twenty-three  women  filling  our  schedules  and  doing 
work  directly  connected  with  the  employees  in  industrial 
or  commercial  establishments,  seven  are  in  factories ;  four 
are  in  commercial  houses ;  two  are  with  a  consulting  and  a 
research  organization  respectively ;  one,  formerly  director 
of  an  industrial  employment  and  ser\ace  department,  is 
now  an  independent  consultant ;  the  remaining  ten  are 
"welfare  workers"  outside  of  an  organized  personnel 
service  or  "educational  directors"  in  department  stores. 
These  last  two  groups  are  dealt  with  in  Chapters  XII 
and  XIII. 

In  the  industrial  group  salaries  range  from  $1,500  to 
$3,000,  with  a  median  salary  of  $1,846.  This  group  includes 
the  personnel  director  of  a  large  eastern  book  m.anufactur- 
ing  establishment,  the  superintendent  of  the  employment 
and  service  department  of  an  Ohio  clothing  factory,  the 
chief  of  the  "women's  department  of  the  employment  di- 
vision of  the  industrial  relations  branch"  of  a  great  Illinois 
company  manufacturing  electric  equipment,  two  employ- 
ment managers  in  Pennsylvania  knitting  and  stocking  fac- 
tories, an  assistant  to  the  employment  secretary  in  an  Ohio 
rubber  company,  and  a  personnel  secretary  for  office  work- 
ers in  a  New  York  watch  manufacturing  company.  These 
women  are  all  college  graduates,  several  with  advanced  de- 
grees. Three  have  had  the  Bryn  Mawr  course  in  industrial 
supervision  and  employment  management.  Five  are  of  re- 
cent college  classes,  taking  their  positions  in  1919.  Two 
have  been  in  personnel  work  since  1913,  and  have  helped 
to  establish  it  as  a  profession. 

Several  advise  direct  application  and  personal  interviews 
as  the  best  methods  of  securing  employment.  Others  advise 
using  bureaus  of  occupations.  The  superintendent  of  em- 
ployment in  a  notably  well  organized  men's  clothing  factory 
says :  "Apply  for  an  apprenticeship  course,  which  involves 
learning  all  the  operations  in  the  manufacture  of  men's 


PERSONNEL  SERVICES  195 

clothing  and  occupying  executive  positions  in  various  de- 
partments of  the  factory." 

Other  comments  and  advice  are  as  follov^^s :  "The  poli- 
cies of  my  employer  with  regard  to  the  employment  of 
women  are  very  liberal.  Eighty  per  cent  of  the  employees 
are  women,  some  in  positions  of  considerable  responsibil- 
ity. An  employees'  representative  committee  is  being  con- 
templated." 

"My  employers  are  progressive  in  methods  of  production, 
conservative  in  policies  affecting  employees.  Because  of 
the  size  and  functionalization  of  the  work,  I  should  advise 
a  beginner  to  get  her  first  or  early  experience  with  a  small 
organization  where  work  is  less  routine  and  broader." 

"The  fact  that  an  employment  department  was  started_  is 
proof  of  at  least  some  progressive  ideas.  I  should  advise 
women  entering  this  work  to  know  as  much  about  the  labor 
and  general  policies  of  the  firm  as  possible.  Make  the  firm 
'quahfy'  as  well  as  yourself." 

"The  firm  is  progressive  because  of  broad  knowledge  of 
industrial  problems  and  fearlessness  in  trying  out  experi- 
ments. They  have  a  very  broad  policy  with  regard  to  the 
employment  of  women.  About  one-half  of  the  foremen  in 
the  production,  instruction,  and  inspection  departments  are 
women.  I  advise  actual  experience  for  at  least  a  year  in 
the  industry  to  be  chosen  as  a  field  for  employment  work, 
wide  reading  on  industrial  problems  and  economics,  and 
development  of  a  healthy  body." 

"I  consider  my  employers'  policies  progressive  because 
they  keep  ahead  of  both  the  economic  and  social  trends. 
...  I  was  acting  'works  manager'  during  the  war,  and 
still  retain  some  of  the  duties.  ...  I  advise  women  consid- 
ering personnel  work  to  enter  actual  factory  work  for  six 
months  or  a  year  and  not  to  consider  salary  as  of  more 
value  than  the  opportunity  to  work." 

"Be  tactful.  Don't  give  any  one  the  impression  that  you 
know  more  than  they  do.  Don't  expect  to  reform  the  fac- 
tory in  a  day." 

The  statements  of  duties  show  the  range  and  coordinat- 
ing character  of  modern  personnel  departments.  The  ques- 
tion arises,  however,  whether  the  amount  of  direct  "welfare 


196        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

work"  put  upon  women  personnel  managers  may  not  be  to 
the  detriment  of  their  personnel  work  proper.  Supervision 
of  welfare  activities  is  one  thing;  actual  recreation  work, 
home  visiting,  and  so  forth,  is  another.  The  answer  prob- 
ably depends  upon  the  size  of  the  factory  and  the  stage  of 
development  of  the  personnel  department ;  but  statements 
like  the  following  suggest  too  great  a  range  of  detail: 

"I  employ  all  workers  ('fire'  when  necessary)  ;  handle 
complaints  and  cases  of  discipline;  supervise  medical  work, 
lunch  room,  recreations,  etc." 

"I  hire  all  workers ;  do  first-aid  work,  safety  work,  ab- 
sentee visiting,  recreational  work,  all  things  pertaining  to 
welfare." 

"I  do  hiring,  follow-up,  and  transfer  of  employees,  and 
look  after  their  general  welfare." 

Other  statements  refer  more  directly  to  personnel  super- 
vision : 

The  service  secretary  of  a  metal  products  plant  says :  "I 
am  given  a  good  deal  of  authority,  do  all  the  employing  of 
men  and  women  in  the  mill  and  office,  and  have  a  good 
deal  to  say  about  rate-setting,  promotion,  etc.  My  assistant 
is  trained  to  take  my  place  at  any  time.  The  nurse  also 
has  a  good  deal  of  authority  in  admitting  to  work  people 
who  have  been  out  sick  and  in  regulating  the  cleanliness, 
ventilation,  and  improvements  in  the  mill ;  and  it  is  now 
possible  that  the  woman  who  is  assistant  in  our  production 
department  will  be  given  full  charge  of  the  production 
work  in  this  plant,  which  is  a  position  of  considerable  re- 
sponsibility." 

An  assistant  industrial  relations  manager  in  the  footwear 
department  of  a  large  rubber  corporation  says  in  filling  out 
an  employers'  schedule  for  her  firm :  "There  are  four 
women  assistant  industrial  relations  managers.  They  (and 
other  women  in  executive  and  technical  positions)  have 
gone  through  our  Planning  Department  School,  in  which 
they  have  roade  process  analyses  of  different  operations 
connected  with  footwear  manufacturing.  In  addition  they 
have  learned  how  to  make  rubber  shoes."  The  list  of 
women  taking  this  course  includes  besides  the  industrial  re- 
lations managers  fourteen  nurses,  one  dietitian,  six  women 


II 


PERSONNEL  SERVICES  197 

in  the  instruction  department,  and  one  scientific  manage- 
ment worker. 

An  "associate  consultant"  in  a  recently  established  firm 
of  consultants  in  industrial  relations  says :  "I  do  research, 
and  am  held  in  readiness  to  do  field  work,  i.  e.,  installing 
employment  departments  and  providing  a  labor  policy  for 
factories.  People  going  into  this  work  should  take  as  much 
graduate  work  in  social  economics  as  possible  and  work  in 
factories  for  several  years.  When  they  have  done  this,  no 
concrete  advice  will  be  necessary." 

A  recent  study  of  women  in  executive  and  technical  po- 
sitions in  250  factories  in  and  about  New  York  City  ^  dis- 
closed one  personnel  director,  one  employment  manager  for 
all  help  except  in  the  office,  26  employment  managers  for 
women  help,  and  25  assistant  employment  managers,  be- 
sides 23  welfare  workers,  4  doctors,  80  nurses,  11  instruct- 
ors, 19  lunchroom  managers,  and  58  matrons. 

In  the  commercial  group  salaries  range  from  $1,560  to 
$2,080,  and  have  undoubtedly  risen  since  reported.  A  study 
of  opportunities  for  women  in  department  stores  made  in 
1920  ^  finds  the  salaries  of  employment  managers  ranging 
from  $1,760  to  $3,380  with  a  median  salary  of  $2,190;  of 
assistant  employment  managers,  from  $1,200  to  $2,340,  with 
a  median  salary  of  $1,500.  Our  group  includes  three  women 
in  department  stores  in  Massachusetts,  Michigan,  and  Ohio, 
and  a  research  worker  in  a  New  York  bureau  of  retail  re- 
search, maintained  by  eighteen  department  stores  through- 
out the  country.  Of  the  personnel  workers,  one  is  called 
"selector  of  female  help" ;  one,  "welfare  investigator" ; 
one,  "employment  manager."  Three  are  college  graduates, 
one  with  the  Bryn  Mawr  industrial  course ;  one  was  pre- 
pared for  college,  and  served  as  advertising  writer  and  as- 
sistant buyer  for  the  store  before  entering  the  employment 
department.  The  welfare  investigator  examines  and  in- 
structs new  employees,  follows  up  and  studies  their  general 

^Executive  and  Technical  Women  in  Industry:  Survey  of  fac- 
tories, iQiQ-igso.  (Pamphlet.)  Young  Women's  Christian  Asso- 
ciation.    Employment  Department. 

-'Positions  of  Responsibility  in   Department  St^rr   Ornanizations. 
Bulletin  No.  5.     Bureau  of  Vocational  Information  (1921). 


198        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

efficiency,  does  home  visiting,  etc.  The  employment  man- 
ager took  her  position  in  1919  after  two  years'  experience 
in  a  field  office  of  the  United  States  Employment  Service. 
She  attends  to  placement  work,  transfers,  increases  in  sal- 
ary, and  discharges.  She  considers  the  policies  of  her 
employers  "very  far  above  the  average,"  and  gives  this 
advice : 

"Secure  (i)  a  coUege  education;  (2)  special  training  in 
employment  management  courses;  (3)  experience  in  the 
selling  and  non-selling  departments  of  a  store." 

The  research  worker  says :  "I  investigate  and  study 
employment  departments  of  stores  of  our  association.  This 
includes  policies  of  firm,  employment  procedures  and  poli- 
cies, wages,  education,  and  welfare.  This  work  requires 
an  interest  in  people,  practical  experience  in  a  factory  or 
store,  and  specialized  study  in  the  field." 


Closely  alHed  to  personnel  work  with  organizations  is  the 
work  of  public  employment  offices  or  labor  exchanges. 
During  the  war  the  War  Emergency  United  States  Em- 
ployment Service  in  cooperation  with  existing  state  systems 
established  a  network  of  nine  hundred  offices  throughout 
the  country  for  the  purpose  of  distributing  workers  as  they 
were  most  needed  for  war  production  and  of  furnishing 
continuous  country-wide  reports  on  the  condition  of  the 
labor  market.  While  this  work  was  inevitably  done  hastily 
and  imperfectly  under  war-time  conditions,  and  has  been 
practically  suspended  because  of  the  failure  of  Congress  to 
pass  legislation  and  make  appropriations  establishing  a  per- 
manent state-federal  system  of  labor  exchanges,  such  a  sys- 
tem is  essential  to  the  proper  organization  of  a  modern 
industrial  democracy ;  and  there  is  every  expectation  that 
the  United  States  will  not  lag  far  behind  such  countries  as 
Great  Britain  and  Canada  in  creating  a  public  employment 
service  for  every  group  of  workers  from  unskilled  to  pro- 
fessional. 

With  the  organization  of  this  system,  personnel  work  in 
public  employment  offices  will  become  a  form  of  profes- 
sional service  comparable  to  teaching  in  its  social  impor- 


PERSONNEL  SERVICES  199 

tance,  and  should  attract  the  best  types  of  young  men  and 
young  women.  The  success  of  any  such  system  will  de- 
pend primarily  upon  the  character  of  its  personnel;  and  it 
must  be  jealously  guarded  from  becoming  the  refuge  of  the 
mediocre  or  the  sphere  of  petty  politics.  Public  employ- 
ment offices  will  supplement  the  efforts  of  personnel  de- 
partments in  individual  organizations,  and  will  cooperate 
with  them  in  securing  and  redistributing  workers.  If 
rightly  administered,  they  should  act  as  a  great  stabiHzing 
and  educative  agency,  reducing  unemployment  and  seasonal 
employment  and  furnishing  authoritative  vocational  infor- 
mation and  practical  vocational  guidance. 

With  the  reestablishment  of  a  nation-wide  public  em- 
ployment service  provision  will  undoubtedly  be  made  for 
the  training  of  its  staff"  of  workers,  partly  through  the  sys- 
tem itself,  partly  through  cooperation  with  universities,  col- 
leges, and  special  institutions.  The  War  Emergency  Service 
conducted  during  the  winter  of  1919  a  series  of  two-weeks 
training  conferences  for  selected  members  of  its  field  staff, 
which  made  promising  beginnings  in  this  direction. 

But  whether  personnel  services  are  public  or  private,  they 
involve  definite  techniques  of  interviewing,  advising,  test- 
ing and  rating,  selecting  and  placing,  following  up  and  in- 
vestigating, that  must  be  made  matters  of  continuous  study 
and  revision.  There  are  also  the  techniques  of  devising 
and  using  effective  forms  and  statistics.  Much  is  to  be 
learned  from  the  specifications  for  personnel  officers  pre- 
pared by  the  Army  Committee  on  Classification  of  Per- 
sonnel and  the  procedures  of  the  eleven  "personnel  schools" 
which  it  conducted  at  various  camps,  and  its  schools  for 
"S.  A.  T.  C."  personnel  officers  and  for  trade-test  officers.^ 
Its  specifications  and  rating  scale  have  been  described  in 
Chapter  III.  There  is  likely  to  be  increasing  attention  to 
employment  psychologx'  in  employment  offices  and  personnel 
departments,  both  to  the  actual  giving  of  tests  and  to  the 
experimental  working  out  of  such  tests.-     A  research  and 

^Personnel  System  of  the  D.  S.  Army,  (igrg.)  Vol.  I,  Cliapter 
30;  Vol.  II,  Chapters  3,  13. 

'Henry  C.  Link.  Employment  Psychology  (1919).  Chapters  r-9, 
14-21. 


20O       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

testing  laboratory  may  well  become  a  part  of  any  adequate 
and  progressive  employment  system,  although  as  yet  tests 
for  determining  individual  occupational  aptitudes  are  in 
their  infancy.  The  whole  matter  of  interviewing  needs  to 
be  much  more  thoroughly  studied.  It  can  no  longer  be 
guided  merely  by  good  wall  and  an  inner  light.  The  National 
Committee  of  Bureaus  of  Occupations  for  Trained  Women 
appointed  in  May,  1919,  a  special  committee  on  methods  and 
techniques,  which  is  planning  a  careful  study  of  the  prac- 
tices and  principles  of  interviewing.  The  Harvard  Bureau 
of  Vocational  Guidance,  the  Industrial  Relations  Associa- 
tion, and  other  agencies,  are  likewise  actively  engaged  in 
studying  the  various  problems  connected  with  the  training 
of  workers  for  personnel  services. 


LIBRARY 

STATE  TF.-\;:hf-'-   COLLEGE 
SANTA    BARSAJ^A      Ca-jOHNIA 


CHAPTER  XII 

INDUSTRIAL  AND  LABOR  SERVICES 

Personnel  service  is  by  no  means  the  only  type  of  work 
for  professional  women  in  industry,  although  it  is  just 
now  the  most  popular.  Opportunities  of  various  other 
kinds  are  developing  in  industrial  corporations  and  "plants" ; 
and  there  are  outside  organizations  which  devote  them- 
selves to  the  study  of  industrial  and  labor  problems  and 
to  the  regulation  and  improvement  of  industrial  conditions. 

These  outside  organizations  may  be  classified  as:  (i) 
Voluntary  associations  of  citizens,  such  as  the  American 
Association  for  Labor  Legislation  and  the  Consumers' 
League;  (2)  public  departments,  boards,  and  commissions; 
(3)  organizations  of  employers,  such  as  the  National  Asso- 
ciation of  Manufacturers  and  the  National  Industrial  Con- 
ference Board;  and  (4)  organizations  of  industrial  work- 
ers, such  as  labor  or  trade  unions.  Their  aims  include  the 
bettering  of  working  conditions  through  publicity,  educa- 
tion, and  legislation ;  the  enforcement  of  legislation  through 
inspection  and  regulation ;  the  improvement  of  organization, 
administration,  and  processes  through  joint  action  by  the 
employers;  the  securing  of  adequate  wages  and  just  and 
stable  working  conditions  through  collective  action  by  the 
workers ;  research  and  investigation  along  all  these  lines. 
Research  bureaus  are  maintained  by  private  associations 
or  foundations  ;  by  federal  and  state  governments ;  by  bodies 
of  manufacturers  or  individual  corporations ;  they  are  be- 
ing established  by  organized  labor. 

Employers  have  in  the  past  concerned  themselves  chiefly 
with  methods  of  production  and  scientific  research  on  ma- 
terials and  processes.  But  the  past  few  years  have  brought 
some  of  them  to  a  realization  of  the  importance  of  con- 
structive labor  policies  and  the  maintenance  of  satisfactory 

201 


202        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

industrial  relations.  To  bring  these  about,  they  are  setting 
up  research  and  information  services  and  calling  for  the  ex- 
pert advice  of  industrial  engineers  and  consultants.  The 
"labor  audit"  ^  takes  its  place  beside  the  "production  chart," 
the  "sales  audit"  and  the  "financial  audit."  Labor  adjust- 
ment boards  representing  management  and  labor  and  pre- 
sided over  by  a  chairman  acceptable  to  both  groups  are 
being  established  in  great  industries  like  the  men's  clothing 
industry.  Elaborate  provisions  for  the  training  of  workers 
in  service,  like  the  great  "rubber  university"  in  Akron,  Ohio, 
are  being  made.  A  new  type  of  professionally  trained  ex- 
ecutive is  needed,  and  plans  are  being  developed  for  his 
production  in  larger  numbers.  A  recent  bulletin  says :  "The 
slight  role  in  the  management  of  large  enterprises  which  is 
played  by  the  individual  shareholder  serves  to  bring  into 
prominence  the  salaried  managerial  staff.  The  professional 
manager  has  come  into  existence  as  a  class."  ^  Sidney 
Webb's  characterization  of  him  has  been  given  on  page 
14;  and  the  arrangement  by  which  groups  of  industries 
are  preparing  "specifications  for  managers"  for  the  higher 
educational  institutions   has   been  described  on  pages   45, 

46. 

Some  idea  of  the  range  of  positions  opening  to  pro- 
fessional women  in  industrial  plants  may  be  gathered  from 
the  schedules  received  from  industrial  employers  and  from 
women  already  in  such  positions.  Our  employers'  schedule 
asked:  "Do  you  employ  women  in  executive,  technical, 
or  higher  clerical  positions?  Please  list  below  kinds  of 
positions  held  by  women ;  number  of  women  in  each."  The 
seventeen  firms  replying  manufacture  chemicals,  clothing, 
food  products,  metal  products,  optical  goods,  paper  prod- 
ucts, rubber  products,  shoes ;  and  represent  New  England, 
the  middle  Atlantic  states,  and  the  middle  western  states. 
Eight  report  in  general  that  they  have  women  filling  execu- 
tive positions ;  two,  women  in  technical  positions ;  three, 
women  in  higher  clerical  positions.    A  metal  products  firm 

*  Ordway  Tead.  The  Labor  Audit.  Employment  Management 
Series,  No.  8  (1920).    H.  S.  Gantt.    Organizing  for  Work  (1919). 

^Alfred  B.  Rich.  The  Wage-Sciting  Process.  Employment  Man- 
agement Series,  No.  5  (1919). 


INDUSTRIAL  AND  LABOR  SERVICES      203 

reports  a  woman  assistant  director  of  the  production  de- 
partment, who  may  be  placed  in  full  charge  of  the  produc- 
tion work.  A  woman  personnel  director  served  as  "works 
manager"  of  a  book  manufacturing  establishment  during 
the  war,  A  clothing  firm  reports  women  heads  of  divisions 
and  women  supervisors.  Five  firms  report  women  foremen. 
Two  chemical  firms  employ  women  chemists;  an  optical 
firm  has  a  woman  lens  designer.  Two  firms  report  women 
in  their  planning  departments,  one  of  them  employing  eight. 
Three  have  industrial  or  technical  librarians ;  one,  an  editor 
of  a  "house  organ,''  Three  report  women  in  their  instruc- 
tion departments.  A  large  rubber  corporation  employs  a 
woman  as  general  director  of  instruction,  six  heads  of  in- 
struction departments  in  different  factories,  and  a  woman 
director  of  Americanization,  This  firm  puts  every  woman 
in  a  responsible  position  through  its  "Planning  Departm.ent 
School."  Eight  firms  report  nurses ;  two,  directors  of  lunch- 
rooms ;  three,  managers  or  matrons  of  girls'  lodging  houses. 
Only  one  reports  a  dietitian.  Five  report  secretaries  to 
executives ;  two,  chief  clerks ;  two,  head  file  clerks.  One 
each  reports  cost  accountants,  a  head  payroll  clerk,  a  head 
bookkeeper. 

To  the  question,  "What  experience  have  you  had  in 
the  employment  of  college  women  versus  non-college 
women?"  one  well  organized  firm  replies:  "Same  as  with 
college  men — hard  for  them  to  get  beyond  the  pe- 
riod of  overconfiderice  in  their  superior  knowledge  of 
a  particular  job  and  feel  sufficient  respect  for  the  knowledge 
of  others  who  have  real  experience.  .  .  .  They  need  em- 
phasis on  work  rather  than  pay  and  training  to  expect 
difficulties  and  rise  above  them  and  to  respect  the  work  and 
knowledge  of  those  who  lack  education." 

A  progressive  firm  of  shoe  manufacturers  says :  "Col- 
lege women  are  preferable  in  the  planning  and  employment 
work.  They  quickly  grasp  new  problems  and  learn  quickly. 
During  the  war  we  employed  college  women  in  our  planning 
department  instead  of  men.  In  our  planning  department 
we  have  one  woman  to  three  men.  (Operations  now  open 
to  women  for  the  first  time  will  remain  open  to  them. 
Women  will  always  be  a  poorer  risk  than  men  because  of 


204       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

the  chance  of  losing  the  best  ones  by  marriage.  We  expect 
to  lose  fifty  per  cent  of  college  trained  women  through 
marriage.  We  estimate  that  on  executive  and  technical 
work  five  women  equal  four  men." 

A  firm  doing  a  large  manufacturing  and  mail-order  busi- 
ness says:  "Of  the  1,500  people  in  our  office,  1,400  are 
women  and  100  are  men.  Many  department  heads  are 
women,  and  most  of  our  technical  work  and  higher  clerical 
work  is  done  by  women.  Ninety-nine  per  cent  of  our 
women,  however,  are  not  college  graduates.  Our  force  is 
constantly  being  searched  for  people  to  do  the  more  difficult 
work;  and  we  have  a  system  of  training  which  prepares  for 
the  duties  of  our  office.  Our  clerks  spend  from  two  weeks 
to  two  months  in  learning  our  work,  and  are  constantly 
being  sent  back  to  our  training  school  for  development. 
Our  average  service  for  women  is  five  and  a  half  years. 
Vacancies  are  filled  by  the  most  capable  people  obtainable, 
regardless  of  whether  man  or  woman.  The  influence  of 
the  last  four  years  has  given  women  in  business  a  place 
comparable  to  their  position  in  public  school  work.  We  be- 
lieve that  business  women  are  as  much  a  fixture  as  business 
men." 

The  employment  manager  of  a  large  firm  manufacturing 
optical  goods  and  cameras  says :  "On  the  value  of  college 
versus  non-college  women,  I  do  not  venture  an  opinion. 
It  seems  to  me  largely  an  individual  question.  Some  posi- 
tions require  college  women — others  do  not.  I  should  ad- 
vise technical  training  for  the  majority  of  cases.  A  college 
education  is  helpful  for  some  w^ork,  but  it  requires  a  per- 
sonality and  initiative  to  make  it  valuable.  .  .  .  Any  gener- 
alization upon  the  relative  efficiency  of  men  and  women  do- 
ing similar  work  would  be  misleading.  The  comparison 
would  have  to  be  based  upon  particular  people.  Some  women 
are  more  competent  than  men,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  some 
men  are  more  competent  than  women.  I  am  under  the  im- 
pression that  the  average  woman  does  not  stay  in  the  com- 
pany's employ  as  long  as  the  man,  and  for  the  reason  that 
the  woman  works  only  until  she  gets  married.  .  .  .  The 
war  has  undoubtedly  opened  up  many  new  fields  for  the 
employment  of  women.    In  the  majority  of  cases  I  feel  that 


INDUSTRIAL  AND  LABOR  SERVICES      205 

women  will  hold  the  positions  they  have  obtained  through 
the  war," 

A  woman  employment  manager  in  a  company  manufac- 
turing watches  says:  "If  jobs  are  properly  selected  for  in- 
terest and  suitability,  college  women  are  a  success.  Their 
business  keenness  is  A-i.  On  the  other  hand,  they  are  too 
ambitious  for  many  jobs.  .  .  .  We  do  not  have  any  women 
regularly  'on  the  road,'  but  we  have  sent  some  college  women 
out  for  periods  of  from  two  weeks  to  two  months  to  get 
sales  experience  for  our  experimental  branch  work.  ,  .  . 
Women  need  to  be  impressed  with  a  more  serious  and  far- 
reaching  purpose  in  their  attitude  and  training  for  positions 
and  to  make  some  compromise  about  employment  versus 
marriage  or  with  marriage,  or  else  they  will  always  be  con- 
sidered a  less  safe  investment  than  men  because  of  the 
possibility  of  loss  from  matrimony  and  the  lack  of  real 
ambition  for  a  long  period  because  of  the  prospect." 

Another  woman  employment  manager  in  a  great  rubber 
company  says :  "We  employ  men  and  women  in  the  same 
or  comparable  positions,  but  less  than  five  per  cent  of  such 
workers  are  women.  We  lack  a  sufficient  number  of  cases 
upon  which  to  base  a  comparison  of  the  work  of  college 
and  non-college  women.  Women  going  into  our  higher  po- 
sitions need  a  working  knowledge  of  economics,  a  broad 
human  experience,  and  an  appreciation  of  professional 
ideals.  .  .  .  The  war  has  brought  us  a  step  nearer  making 
abiHty  and  not  sex  the  criterion  for  determining  the  indi- 
vidual's fitness  for  a  position." 

Another  rubber  company  says:  "College  education  is 
desirable  but  not  necessary  in  most  of  our  positions.  .  .  . 
For  our  office  staff  we  have  typewriter  and  comptometer 
schools,  and  classes  in  language,  drafting,  and  so  on.  .  .  . 
We  estimate  that  the  work  of  three  women  is  equal  to  that 
of  two  men.  .  .  .  We  think  that  the  war  has  made  no  ap- 
preciable changes  in  the  employment  of  women  above  the 
operative  or  lower  clerical  group." 

A  firm  of  manufacturing  chemists  says:  "We  employ 
college  women  as  chemists.  .  .  .  We  employ  an  equal  num- 
ber of  men  and  women,  and  find  their  efficiency  about  the 
same  in  positions  where  physical  strength  is  not  required. 


2o6       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

As  regards  persistence,  men  and  women  of  middle  life  are 
more  dependable.  Women,  I  believe,  are  as  capable  as 
men,  and  more  contented.  There  is  an  ever  increasing  field 
foi  them." 

On  the  other  hand,  a  large  firm  manufacturing  paper 
products  says :  "Women  do  not  show  as  much  originality 
and  initiative  as  men,  and  are  not  as  dependable.  Men  are 
more  apt  to  stay  in  a  given  place  longer." 

Within  a  year,  two  local  studies  of  professional  women 
in  industry  have  been  made.^  In  May,  1919,  the  Cleveland 
Bureau  of  Occupations  for  Trained  Women  issued  a  small 
bulletin  entitled  "Opportunities  for  Trained  Women  in 
Cleveland  Factories,"  giving  the  results  of  personal  inter- 
views with  officials  of  125  factories,  representing  nine  dif- 
ferent industries.  Early  in  1920,  the  Employment  Depart- 
ment of  the  Central  Branch  of  the  Young  Women's  Chris- 
tian Association  issued  a  somewhat  larger  bulletin  entitled 
"Executive  and  Technical  Women  in  Industry,"  giving  the 
results  of  a  study  of  250  factories  in  and  about  New  York 
City  employing  100  women  or  more  and  representing  fifteen 
different  industries  as  well  as  a  number  of  unclassified  es- 
tablishments. Both  studies  found  the  largest  number  of 
women  in  personnel  services,  as  employment  or  "welfare" 
managers  or  assistants,  but  report  others  in  the  production, 
financial,  advertising  and  sales,  and  research  departments. 
In  Cleveland,  women  in  responsible  positions  included  the 
general  manager  of  a  firm  employing  twelve  hundred  men 
in  the  manufacture  of  automobile  bodies;  a  production 
supervisor  in  a  large  clothing  factory ;  assistant  buyers  for 
two  firms ;  a  claims  agent  with  entire  responsibility  for 
settling  claims  against  the  company ;  head  cost  accountants 
in  four  factories;  draftsmen  in  ten;  women  in  the  engineer- 
ing departments  of  two;  chemists  or  physicists  in  the  labora- 
tories of  six;  several  designers  in  clothing  factories  and 
one  in  a  furniture  factory;  a  decorator  in  a  paint  factory, 

*  See  also  the  announcement  for  1919-1920  of  the  Carola  IVoeri- 
shoffer  Graduate  Department  of  Social  Economy  and  Social  Re- 
search of  Bryn  Mawr  College  for  lists  of  industrial  positions  held 
by  its  graduates  and  of  cooperating  firms. 


INDUSTRIAL  AND  LABOR  SERVICES       207 

giving  advice  about  household  decoration ;  women  adver- 
tising workers  in  three  factories,  whose  work  included  the 
preparation  of  trade  catalogues ;  trained  nurses  in  all  large 
factories  and  in  a  number  of  small  ones.    In  two  factories, 
but  only  two,  a  trained  dietitian  was  employed  in  the  lunch- 
room.    Apprenticeship  courses,  open  to  women  with  col- 
lege training  or  its  equivalent,   were   found   in  the  three 
largest   clothing   factories.     Apprentices   begin   as    factory 
operatives  at  practically  their  wage,  and  after  learning  all 
operations  thoroughly,  which  takes  usually  from  six  months 
to  a  year,  are  promoted  to  executive  positions  according 
to  aptitude  and  ability.     In  all  departments  of  one  factory, 
and    in   some    departments   of    another,    none   but    college 
trained  women  are  given  positions  as  forewomen.     They 
have  extensive  connections  with  the  "service''  department 
and  more  executive  responsibility  than  the  average  fore- 
women in  other  plants.     In  the  metal  trades,   office  and 
service  positions  were  the  only  openings  found;  but  sev- 
eral officials  expressed  the  wish  that  trained  women  might 
become  interested  in  this  work,  in  spite  of  its  unattractive- 
ness.     "Two  employment  managers  expressed  a  desire  to 
start  in  their  factories  a  sort  of  apprenticeship  course  for 
women  interested  enough  to  see  beyond  the  dirt  and  mo- 
notony a  chance  to  prove  their  value  for  higher  positions." 
Of  the  250  factories  in  and  about  New  York  City,  31  em- 
ployed  no  women  in   responsible   positions;   73   employed 
them  only  as  forewomen ;  and  146  employed  them  as  ex- 
ecutives other  than  forewomen.     One  woman  was  found 
as  director  of  a  firm,  one  as  vice-president,  and  one  as 
mediator  between  employees  and  management.    There  were 
also  found  nine  factory  managers,  one  superintendent  of  all 
departments,    116  production    supervisors,    76   department 
heads,  46  assistant  heads,  99  forewomen  hiring  for  their 
own  departments,  22  office  managers,  15  heads  of  filing  de- 
partments, 2  head  statisticians,  12  statisticians,  6  chief  ac- 
countants, 9  accountants,  3  advertising  managers  and  one 
assistant   manager,    15    publicity   workers,    editors,    special 
writers,  and  copy  writers,   16  artists,  one  buyer,   2  sales 
executives,  16  saleswomen  on  the  road,  9  chemists,  loi  de- 
signers, 24  draftsmen,  4  engineers,  17  librarians,  assistant 


2o8       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

librarians,  and  translators,  one  head  of  a  correspondence  de- 
partment and  95  correspondents. 

The  report  shows  that  the  forewomen  found  in  New 
York  factories  are  mostly  of  the  old  type,  promoted  from 
the  ranks  of  operatives.  It  advises  candidates  for  executive 
and  technical  positions  not  to  enter  as  operatives  to  gain 
advancement,  except  on  assurance  of  specific  opportunity. 
There  seem  to  be  no  definite  apprentice  courses  for  college 
women,  such  as  are  found  in  Cleveland,  although  it  is 
stated  that  "the  foreman  or  forewoman  is  a  most  important 
link  in  the  chain  of  production,  and  employers  are  beginning 
to  call  for  college  or  technical  training  for  the  forewoman's 
job."  The  report  cites  a  large  candy  factory  which  seeks 
forewomen  with  a  high  degree  of  education  and  some  spe- 
cial training  in  foods,  preferring  women  of  this  type  to  the 
brightest  of  operators,  although  operators  are  frequently 
sent  away  for  the  necessary  training.  It  quotes  the  manager 
of  a  corset  factory  as  saying:  "Send  us  several  college 
graduates  for  forewomen's  jobs.  We  will  give  them  the 
technical  training  and  the  opportunity  for  advancement." 
Another  manager  said :  "A  woman  accountant  on  our 
force  became  interested  in  production.  As  she  showed 
marked  executive  ability,  we  made  her  forewoman  and 
later  department  head.  The  experiment  was  so  successful 
that  we  have  repeated  it  in  numerous  cases.  The  woman 
who  works  with  figures  is  more  exact  in  estimating  and 
reporting,  frequently  more  impersonal  in  her  dealings  with 
the  workers,  and  seems  to  command  a  high  degree  of  re- 
spect and  cooperation." 

The  report  shows  that  the  better  opportunities  exist  in 
the  larger  establishments,  and  makes  it  clear  that  at  this 
stage  it  is  highly  important  for  professional  women  going 
into  industry  to  know  the  labor  policy  and  system  of  train- 
ing and  promotion  of  the  firm  with  which  they  identify 
themselves.  It  also  urges  the  growing  necessity  of  spe- 
cialized training  for  executive  or  technical  work  in  the  in- 
dustrial field. 

A  group  of  young  college  women  filling  our  schedules 
are  now  serving  or  have  recently  served  operative  appren- 
ticeships in  industrial  plants  in  order  to  qualify  for  ex- 


INDUSTRIAL  AND  LABOR  SERVICES       209 

ecutive  positions.  Several  of  them  are  under  twenty-five, 
and  have  taken  up  the  work  directly  after  leaving  college 
or  after  brief  training  or  other  experience.  Salaries  re- 
ported are  accordingly  low.  ranging  from  $936  to  $1,500. 
A  young  woman  graduated  in  1917  took  the  Bryn  Mawr 
course  in  industrial  supervision  for  eight  months ;  became 
for  three  months  chief  clerk  in  the  record  office  of  a  ship- 
building company ;  and  is  now  in  a  large  thread  industry 
"learning  the  factory  operation  of  quilling  in  order  to  take 
charge  of  the  instruction."  Another  graduated  in  191 1 
taught  in  private  and  public  secondary  schools  until  1917; 
then  entered  a  large  shoe  factory ;  and  in  1918  was  executive 
forewoman  in  the  stitching  room,  where  her  duties  included 
making  reports,  filing  records  of  operatives,  and  other  cler- 
ical work,  also  supervision  of  sanitary  arrangements  for 
women  and  some  supervision  of  the  women  employees  of 
the  department.  She  says:  "I  am  in  training  for  an  ex- 
ecutive position.  No  definite  promises  were  made ;  but  if 
I  am  big  enough  the  job  will  grow.  I  have  had  some  train- 
ing in  the  educational  department  of  the  firm."  Her  advice 
to  other  college  women  is,  "Don't  mind  getting  your  hands 
dirty." 

Another  graduated  in  1914;  became  immediately  an  ap- 
prentice in  a  middle  western  clothing  factory  for  four 
months ;  a  production  foreman  for  nine  months ;  instruc- 
tion foreman  for  three  months,  and  then  supervisor  of  the 
instruction  department.  She  says:  "I  plan  the  work  of 
seven  instructors  who  take  charge  of  teaching  all  new  em- 
ployees and  transfers  of  old  employees.  I  do  disciplining; 
overseeing  of  the  making  up  of  new  models  from  the  de- 
signer and  changing  methods  of  handling  work  on  the  vari- 
ous operations.  ...  I  took  the  position  with  the  assurance 
of  'earning  more  than  a  school  teacher  in  a  year,'  and  was 
told  that  the  field  was  a  growing  one  and  offered  opportu- 
nities. .  .  .  The  firm  offers  to  men  and  women  of  executive 
ability  the  opportunity  to  learn  the  men's  garment  trade  as 
a  preface  to  foremanship.  It  employs  women  wherever 
possible  both  for  executives  and  operatives.  There  are  no 
differences  in  the  pay  and  opportunities  of  men  and  women. 
Women  going  into  this  field  should  expect  to  begin  from  the 


2IO       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

bottom  up.  This  requires  good  health,  democratic  spirit, 
and  abihty  to  get  along  with  those  higher  up  and  those 
directly  under  your  care.    It  requires  common  sense." 

As  a  result  of  the  enlightened  policies  of  this  firm, 
this  young  woman  and  others  trained  by  the  same  firm 
became  during  the  war  traveling  inspectors  and  adjusters 
for  the  War  Department  board  for  the  inspection  of  stand- 
ards of  army  clothing.  She  is  familiar  with  every  opera- 
tion connected  with  the  making  of  men's  clothing. 

Two  graduates  of  1916  and  1917  respectively  are  in  the 
planning  department  of  the  shoe  factory  already  mentioned. 
One.  is  planning  investigator  in  the  sole  leather  department, 
doing  time  study  and  efficiency  work ;  the  other  is  super- 
visor of  upper  leather  planning,  and  supervises  the  time 
studies  and  efficiency  work  done  by  four  field  agents.  She 
says  that  there  are  twelve  men  in  positions  comparable  to 
hers,  and  that  there  are  no  differences  in  the  opportunities 
offered  to  men  and  women  in  the  planning  department. 
The  firm  adopted  an  efficiency  system  in  1904,  and  was  one 
of  the  first  to  establish  this  work  on  a  sound  basis.  This 
young  woman  majored  in  economics  and  sociology  in  col- 
lege, and  was  for  a  year  supervisor  of  public  school  music 
in  a  country  town  at  a  salary  of  $700.  She  says :  "I  gave 
up  supervising  music  because  a  broader  field  was  offered  to 
me  in  the  business  world." 

This  sort  of  "efficiency"  or  "scientific  management"  work 
does  not  attract  sO'  many  women  as  does  employment  or 
educational  work  in  factories.  But  it  offers  a  solid  basis 
of  fact  for  either  of  these  types  of  work,  and  is  likely  to 
lead  to  responsible  positions  in  production  or  research.  It 
is  the  work  done  by  the  "industrial  engineer,"  and  should 
appeal  to  young  women  interested  in  the  application:  if 
exact  measurements  and  techniques  to  the  problems  of 
industrial  production  and  management.  It  includes  the 
making  of  time,  motion,  and  fatigue  studies,  and  through 
them  the  preparation  of  "job  analyses"  and  the  standardiza- 
tion of  industrial  processes. 

A  well-known  industrial  engineer  writes :  "We  have  not 
had  a  very  fortunate  experience  with  inducing  professional 
women  to  take  up  work  in  scientific  management.     Such 


INDUSTRIAL  AND  LABOR  SERVICES       211 

work  necessitates  always  a  first-hand  knowledge  of  the 
processes  studied;  and  even  during  the  stress  of  war,  that 
type  of  woman — while  willing  to  do  any  work  with  her 
hands  as  a  patriotic  duty — did  not  seem  to  relish  the  strenu- 
ous apprenticeship  necessary  to  accomplish  motion  and 
fatigue  studies  of  value.  ...  Of  course  we  have  trained 
a  large  number  of  women  for  positions  in  scientific  manage- 
ment in  many  of  its  branches;  but  these  came  from  the 
class  of  women  already  at  work  in  the  industries,  whether 
in  the  shop  or  ofiice  departments.  ...  I  do  not  think  the 
absence  of  professional  women  in  the  scientific  management 
field  is  in  any  way  due  to  the  unwillingness  of  the  industries 
to  admit  them.  In  fact,  I  believe  it  is  entirely  due  to  the 
unwillingness  of  the  women  themselves  to  go  through  the 
necessary  practical  training.  .  .  .  We  believe  that  manage- 
ment offers  not  only  an  ideal  field  for  the  college  trained 
woman,  but  also  that  experience  in  the  work  is  a  training 
for  any  other  type  of  activity  that  a  woman  wishes  to  enter 
later,  whether  in  the  home  or  in  the  so-called  'learned  pro- 
fessions.' " 

Scientific  management  has  no  doubt  been  pushed  into  the 
background  by  the  more  spectacular  appeal  of  "employ- 
ment management"  and  by  the  natural  interest  of  women 
in  personnel  activities.  But  as  they  become  more  familiar 
with  the  inside  of  factories  through  serving  apprentice- 
ships as  operatives  and  more  directly  in  line  for  promotion 
to  all  departments  of  factory  management,  it  is  probable 
that  those  of  mathematical  and  engineering  t}pes  of  mind 
will  turn  to  this  work.  It  is  only  through  such  efficiency 
studies  that  a  solid  basis  can  be  established  for  satisfactory 
"industrial  relations."  With  the  millions  of  women  in  in- 
dustry it  is  highly  important  to  have  women  thoroughly 
equipped  with  regard  to  scientific  and  humane  principles  of 
job  and  wage  setting.  Professional  women  must  not  be 
put  off  with  an  unscientific  kind  of  "personnel  service" 
which  is  only  another  name  for  "welfare  work,"  but  must 
prepare  themselves  for  an  industrial  relations  service  which 
permeates  every  aspect  of  factory  operation  and  manage- 
ment. They  should  look  forward  to  sharing  in  matters  of 
labor  adjustment.     In   1920  a  woman  stood  first  on  the 


212        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

Illinois  Civil  Service  list  for  arbitrators,  but  was  refused 
appointment  by  the  State  Industrial  Board. 


Professional  women  of  many  specialized  types  of  train- 
ing are  likewise  increasingly  employed  in  industrial  plants : 
health  experts,  group  feeding  experts,  psychologists,  chem- 
ists, physicists,  technologists,  advertising  experts,  cost  ac- 
countants, editors  of  "house  organs,"  librarians,  statisticians, 
and  on  so  on.    These  are  dealt  with  in  appropriate  chapters. 

Industrial  health  service  has  been  enormously  developed 
by  the  war  and  by  the  spread  of  legislation  for  workmen's 
compensation  and  the  movement  for  health  insurance. 
"Industrial  medicine  has  during  the  last  four  years  devel- 
oped into  one  of  the  leading  branches  of  the  medical  pro- 
fession. When  the  American  Association  of  Industrial 
Physicians  and  Surgeons  was  organized  in  1916,  very  few 
concerns  had  an  adequate  system  of  health  service  for  their 
employees.  Now  hundreds  of  industries  are  equipped  with 
a  part  or  all  of  the  standards  demanded  by  the  newer  con- 
ception of  the  health  of  employees,  the  medical  examina- 
tion of  applicants  and  of  the  old  force,  the  prevention  of 
industrial  accidents  by  industrial  hygiene  and  safety  first, 
better  medical  and  surgical  treatment  for  the  sick  and  in- 
jured, compensation  and  benefits  and  the  relation  of  this 
human  maintenance  work  to  other  employees'  service  depart- 
ments." ^  Two  new  medical  journals,  the  Journal  of  In- 
dustrial Medicine  and  Modern  Medicine,  are  devoted  in 
whole  or  in  part  to  industrial  health  problems.  The  United 
States  Public  Health  Service  has  established  a  section  on  in- 
dustrial hygiene,  actively  cooperating  with  state  departments 
of  labor  and  industry  and  state  departments  of  health.  Two 
states  have  provided  for  the  rehabilitation  of  industrial  crip- 
ples, and  federal  legislation  on  the  subject  is  pending.  Eight 
medical  schools  ofifer  courses  in  industrial  medicine.  Har- 
vard and  the  University  of  Cincinnati  have  established 
courses  in  industrial  health  with  funds  contributed  by 
groups  of  manufacturers.  Dr.  Alice  Hamilton,  an  authority 
on  industrial  diseases,  has  been  appointed  to  the  Harvard 

^Monthly  Labor  Rcznew.     September,  1919. 


INDUSTRIAL  AND  LABOR  SERVICES      213 

medical  faculty.  The  Boston  Psychopathic  Hospital  has 
led  in  the  study  of  industrial  mental  hygiene ;  and  a  group 
of  experts  have  been  making  further  investigations  in  this 
field.  Mental  clinics  are  advocated  in  all  industrial  cen- 
ters, since  industrial  maladjustment  is  a  potent  cause  of 
mental  strain  and  disorder.  Women  are  likely  to  play  an 
increasing  part  in  the  industrial  health  movement,  especially 
in  factories  employing  large  numbers  of  women  workers, 
not  only  as  physicians,  psychiatrists,  and  public  health 
nurses,  but  as  medical  and  psychiatric  social  workers,  in- 
dustrial hygienists,  and  physical  directors.  All  these  types 
of  health  worker  are  discussed  in  Chapters  IV  and  V. 

Women  chemists  and  physicists  were  very  generally  ad- 
mitted to  industrial  laboratories  as  testing  or  research  as- 
sistants during  the  war,  and  have  come  to  stay.  On  the 
purely  laboratory  side  they  have  a  chance  of  reaching  po- 
sitions as  chief  or  director ;  but  as  yet  they  have  not  entered 
the  field  of  chemical  engineering  or  gone  from  the  labora- 
tory to  plant  or  department  management.^  Women  have 
been  similarly  accepted  as  draftsmen  and  engineers  in  cer- 
tain kinds  of  office  engineering,  but  have  only  in  rare  cases 
done  work  in  the  field.  Scientific  and  technological  workers 
are  dealt  with  in  Chapter  XVII. 


As  a  result  chiefly  of  the  war,  there  is  a  new  awareness 
on  the  part  of  industrial  employers  of  college  and  pro- 
fessional women  as  a  source  of  supply  for  executive,  tech- 
nical, and  research  positions  and  a  new  awareness  on  the 
part  of  these  women  of  industrial  problems  from  the  inside 
instead  of  from  the  outside.  We  have  scarcely  begun  to  re- 
alize the  psychological  and  social  change  involved  in  having 
the  new  generation  of  professional  women  interested  in  in- 
dustry go  through  an  apprenticeship  as  operatives  as  a  mat- 
ter of  course  rather  than  as  a  rare  and  exciting  sociological 
adventure.  One  of  the  first  young  college  women  to  reach 
an  executive  post  in  a  factory  through  beginning  at  the 
bottom  reported  with  humor  that  her  grandmother  was  hor- 

^  See  The  Woman  Chemist.  Bulletin  No.  4,  Bureau  of  Voca- 
tional Information  (1921). 


214       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

rified,  her  mother  puzzled  but  acquiescent,  and  her  brother 
enthusiastic  over  her  course.  The  contacts  thus  made,  the 
understandings  achieved,  the  friendships  formed,  will  be 
an  asset  in  working  out  the  more  democratic  industrial 
relations  of  the  future.  Undergraduates  of  to-day  expect 
no  concessions  on  the  ground  that  they  are  women,  and  talk 
in  a  matter-of-fact  way  of  spending  their  vacations  working 
in  a  factory.  What  is  more,  they  do  it,  and  find  their  own 
"jobs."  Such  a  use  of  the  last  two  summer  vacations  of 
the  college  course  is  coming  to  be  an  accepted  mode  of 
acquiring  pre-professional  industrial  experience.  From 
"the  college  woman  in  industry"  may  be  developed  its  corol- 
lary, "the  industrial  woman  in  college,"  and  arrangements 
may  be  worked  out  whereby  women  operatives  of  ability 
and  promise  may  be  given  the  chance  for  college  courses 
and  college  contacts.  Tests  of  capacity  for  college  work 
might  well  be  worked  out  along  the  lines  of  those  devised 
for  admission  to  the  "Students'  Army  Training  Corps." 
The  college  would  profit  as  much  as  the  industrial  woman. 
Plans  for  something  of  the  sort  are  in  tlie  air,  and  it  has 
already  been  done  on  a  small  scale  by  the  school  for  active 
workers  of  the  Women's  Trade  Union  League. 

The  mutual  enlightenment  of  industrial  employers  and 
professional  women  was  furthered  conspicuously  during 
the  war  by  the  "Women's  Branch  of  the  Industrial  Service 
Section  of  the  Production  Division  of  the  Ordnance  Office 
of  the  War  Department" — an  example  of  the  horrors  of 
official  nomenclature — which  under  the  direction  of  Miss 
Mary  Van  Kleeck  of  the  Industrial  Studies  Department  of 
the  Russell  Sage  Foundation  was  organized  to  look  after 
the  conditions  of  employment  of  women  in  munitions  fac- 
tories, both  government  arsenals  and  civilian  establishments 
working  on  war  contracts.  Its  headquarters  and  field  staff 
included  college  professors  of  economics  and  sociology,  ex- 
ecutive secretaries  of  state  minimum  wage  boards,  officials 
of  state  departments  of  labor  and  industry,  secretaries  of 
branches  of  the  Consumers'  League  and  the  Women's  Trade 
Union  League,  personnel  and  service  managers,  department 
store  educational  directors,  industrial  secretaries  of  the 
Young  Women's  Christian  Association,  factory  inspectors, 


INDUSTRIAL  AND  LABOR  SERVICES       215 

industrial  investigators,  vocational  guidance  vi^orkers,  super- 
visors of  continuation  classes.  Of  thirty-six  women  in  these 
positions,  only  twO'  were  without  direct  or  indirect  indus- 
trial experience.  At  least  twelve  had  likewise  been  social 
workers,  and  seven  or  eight  teachers.  This  picked  group 
epitomizes  the  recent  history  of  professional  women  in  re- 
lation to  industry  and  labor:  the  first  contact  through  social 
work  and  teaching;  the  closer  although  still  external  fa- 
miliarity through  industrial  investigation  under  public  or 
private  auspices  and  through  industrial  education  and  voca- 
tional guidance ;  and,  finally,  actual  employment  in  industry, 
first  as  "welfare"  workers  and  "employment  managers," 
then  in  operative  and  supervisory  positions  concerned  with 
production  rather  than  merely  "service."  The  three-fold 
contact  of  these  "ordnance  women"  with  industrial  em- 
ployers, industrial  workers,  and  the  federal  government 
was  an  education  for  all  concerned.  Moreover,  the  special 
services  established  by  the  Department  of  Labor  and  form- 
ing the  National  War  Labor  Administration  drew  heavily 
upon  women  industrial  experts  and  upon  younger  women 
with  special  training  and  experience.  For  the  first  time, 
trade-union  women  were  placed  in  executive  or  advisory 
positions.  The  Women  in  Industry  Service,  long  advocated 
by  organizations  familiar  with  the  problems  of  working 
women,  came  into  existence  as  a  war-emergency  measure, 
with  Miss  Mary  Van  Kleeck  as  director  and  Miss  Mary 
Anderson,  a  leading  trade-union  organizer,  as  assistant 
director. 

Professional  women  were  attached  to  other  services  of 
the  War  Labor  Administration :  the  War  Labor  Board,  the 
War  Labor  Policies  Board,  the  Information  and  Education 
Service,  the  Working  Conditions  Service,  the  U.  S.  Employ- 
ment Service,  the  U.  S.  Housing  Corporation.  Others  did 
investigative  and  statistical  work  for  the  War  Industries 
Board,  the  Shipping  Board,  the  War  Trade  Board,  the  Cen- 
tral Bureau  of  Planning  and  Statistics,  the  Food  Adminis- 
tration. Women  directed  the  committees  on  women  in  in- 
dustry established  throughout  the  country  by  the  Women's 
Committee  of  the  Council  of  National  Defence. 

Since  the  close  of  the  war  many  of  the  older  women  in 


2i6        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

industrial  and  labor  war  services  have  returned  to  their 
posts  with  enlarged  outlooks  and  a  better  understanding 
of  both  the  advantages  and  limitations  of  government  ad- 
ministration. The  younger  women  have  gone  into  all  sorts 
of  agencies  for  industrial  investigation  or  into  industry  it- 
self. Others  are  pursuing  graduate  study  in  the  economic 
and  industrial  field,  having  learned  the  need  of  as  large  a 
grasp  as  possible  of  principles  and  problems  and  the  im- 
portance of  scientific  techniques  in  industrial  research.  Cer- 
tain institutions  offer  special  opportunities  for  graduate 
study  of  this  character,  among  them  the  universities  of 
California  and  Wisconsin,  Bryn  Mawr  College,  the  schools 
of  social  work,  notably  the  New  York  School,  the  Chicago 
School  of  Civics  and  Philanthropy,  now  the  Philanthropic 
Service  Division  of  the  School  of  Commerce  and  Adminis- 
tration of  the  University  of  Chicago,  rnd  the  New  School 
for  Social  Research  in  New  York.  This  last  institution  is 
offering  for  the  year  1920-1921  several  fellowships  of 
$2,000  for  advanced  research  in  industrial  and  public  prob- 
lems. Other  smaller  fellowships  are  available.  The  three 
research  fellowships  of  the  Women's  Educational  and  In- 
dustrial Union  of  Boston  are  open  to  any  properly  qualified 
woman  college  graduate.  The  fellowships  of  the  Inter- 
collegiate Community  Service  Association,  offered  by  sev- 
eral of  the  member  colleges,  may  be  used  for  study  of  the 
social  bearings  of  industry.  For  all  graduate  work  in  this 
field  pre-professional  courses  in  economics  and  labor  prob- 
lems, statistics,  psychology,  and  some  form  of  biology  are 
essential.  Courses  in  history,  government,  anthropology, 
and  modern  languages  are  of  first  importance.  Contacts 
are  being  developed  between  educational  institutions  and 
industrial  concerns  for  the  providing  of  actual  shop  ex- 
perience for  students  as  part  of  their  professional  training. 
The  Carola  Woerishoffer  Graduate  Department  of  Social 
Economy  and  Social  Research  of  Bryn  Mawr  College  re- 
ports such  arrangements  for  its  students  with  fourteen  firms 
in  the  metal  industries,  seven  in  the  textile  industries,  two 
in  paper  industries,  and  two  in  printing  industries,  as  well 
as  with  seven  public  or  private  research  agencies.  The  plans 
of  the  Technolog}^  Clubs  Associated,  the  American  Council 


INDUSTRIAL  AND  LABOR  SERVICES      217 

on  Education,  and  a  large  number  of  leading  industries  for 
the  professional  training  of  executives  have  been  described. 
While  these  plans  have  reference  chiefly  to  men,  profes- 
sional women  also  are  certain  to  profit  from  them  even- 
tually. 

Outside  private  agencies  for  the  study  and  betterment  of 
industrial  and  labor  conditions  include  (i)  organizations 
primarily  religious  or  philanthropic  in  character,  such  as 
the  Young  Women's  Christian  Association  with  its  depart- 
ment of  industrial  secretaries  for  work  among  working 
women  and  girls ;  the  National  League  of  Women  Workers 
and  other  more  or  less  self-governing  clubs,  and  to  some 
extent  the  Girl  Scouts,  a  body  which  is  beginning  to  work 
with  older  girls ;  (2)  organizations  established  primarily 
for  publicity  and  propaganda  in  the  interests  of  both  indi- 
vidual and  legislative  action,  such  as  the  Consumers'  League 
and  the  National  Child  Labor  Committee;  (3)  organiza- 
tions established  primarily  to  draw  up  programs  and  to 
work  for  improved  legislation  and  proper  enforcement  of 
labor  laws,  such  as  the  American  Association  for  Labor 
Legislation  and  to  some  extent  the  National  Society  for  the 
Promotion  of  Vocational  Education ;  (4)  organizations  es- 
tablished primarily  for  research,  such  as  the  Department  of 
Industrial  Studies  of  the  Sage  Foundation,  the  Bureau  of 
Industrial  Research,  the  National  Industrial  Conference 
Board,  the  Research  Department  of  the  Women's  Educa- 
tional and  Industrial  Union,  the  Industrial  Survey  and  In- 
formation Servdce  in  Washington.  The  particular  groups 
backing  research  organizations  need  to  be  known.  In  some 
cases,  they  are  groups  of  manufacturers ;  in  a  growing  num- 
ber of  cases,  they  are  labor  unions ;  in  other  cases,  they  are 
public-spirited  citizens.  Philanthropic  and  publicity  organi- 
zations are  supplementing  their  personal  activities  with  in- 
vestigations and  legislative  programs.  The  Young  Women's 
Christian  Association  recently  issued  a  pamphlet  on  the 
Legal  Recognition  of  Industrial  Women,  and  maintains  a 
research  department.  The  Consumers'  League  has  for 
years  made  careful  industrial  studies,  and  has  furthered  en- 
lightened labor  legislation  for  women.  Its  national  and 
branch  secretaries  have  been  women  of  wide  reputation ; 


2i8       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

and  young  women  serving  under  them  receive  a  valuable 
training.     Opportunities  are  of  course  few  in  number. 

State  departments  or  bureaus  of  labor  and  industries  are 
growing  in  number  and  importance.  Forty-five  states  have 
some  sort  of  public  labor  board,  many  of  them  active  and 
efficient,  though  others  are  not  free  from  political  dry-rot. 
There  are  frequently  other  public  boards  and  commissions, 
temporary  or  permanent,  dealing  with  industrial  matters. 
Many  states  now  have  workmen's  compensatfon  boards. 
Most  of  these  bodies  employ  well-trained  young  women  as 
inspectors,  investigators,  research  and  statistical  workers 
and  a  smaller  number  of  experienced  women  as  executive 
officers.  A  college  woman  of  experience  in  industrial  in- 
v^estigation  has  been  made  a  member  of  the  New  York 
State  Industrial  Commission  at  a  salary  of  $8,000;  another, 
a  former  secretary  of  the  New  York  City  Consumers' 
League,  is  chief  of  the  women  in  industry  bureau  of  the 
same  commission.  The  state  industrial  welfare  commis- 
sions of  California,  Washington,  and  Kansas  have  wom.en 
executive  secretaries.  iMinnesota,  New  York,  Oregon,  Penn- 
sylvania, and  Wisconsin  have  women  in  charge  of  state 
bureaus  of  women  and  children  in  industry.  Twelve  states, 
ranging  from  Massachusetts  to  California,  and  the  District 
of  Columbia,  have  minimum  wage  boards  or  commissions 
with  women  in  their  membership  and  women  executives. 

Before  the  war  the  various  bureaus  of  the  Federal  De- 
partment of  Labor,  especially  the  Children's  Bureau  and 
the  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics,  employed  a  number  of  com- 
petent women  as  field  agents,  special  investigators,  and  so 
on.  Since  its  establishment,  the  Children's  Bureau  has 
been  headed  by  a  college  woman,  Miss  Julia  C.  Lathrop,  and 
has  employed  many  college  women  in  its  child  labor,  infant 
mortality,  child  health,  and  child  welfare  work.  The  nine- 
teen volume  Report  on  the  Condition  of  Women  and  Child 
Wage  Earners  issued  by  the  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics  in 
191 1  was  to  a  considerable  extent  the  work  of  women  in- 
vestigators. Its  recent  studies  of  the  cost  of  living  and  of 
industrial  conditions  have  been  made  by  a  staff  including 
women.  The  Department  of  Labor  library  is  in  charge 
of  a  woman.    The  war-emergency  Women  in  Industry  Serv- 


INDUSTRIAL  AND  LABOR  SERVICES       219 

ice  has  become  a  permanent  Women's  Bureau,  with  Miss 
Anderson  as  director.  It  employs  women  industrial  ex- 
perts, but  with  its  present  small  appropriations  positions 
under  it  are  few. 

The  importance  of  the  labor  union  movement  has  been 
greatly  enhanced  by  the  war  and  its  results ;  and  it  is  secur- 
ing as  never  before  the  sympathetic  interest  and  in  many 
cases  the  adherence  of  professional  workers.  Organized 
labor,  on  its  side,  is  finding  out  the  value  of  expert  and  dis- 
interested professional  service.  For  professional  women  the 
two  aspects  of  most  direct  significance  are  the  extension 
of  unions  among  unorganized  women  workers^  and  the 
development  of  educational  projects  and  agencies  by  and 
with  the  cooperation  of  organized  labor.  In  the  United 
States,  the  National  Women's  Trade  Union  League  of 
America,  established  in  1904  by  a  group  of  professional 
women  under  the  leadership  of  Mrs.  Raymond  Robins  and 
her  sister,  has  drawn  together  scattered  local  unions  of 
women,  grown  steadily,  and  come  increasingly  under  the  di- 
rection of  labor  women  themselves,  though  admitting  other 
women  to  membership.  It  has  local  branches,  and  repre- 
sents about  600,000  organized  women.  Professional  women 
have  been  connected  with  it  as  executive  secretaries,  editors, 
and  educational  directors.  One  of  the  most  constructive  and 
prophetic  undertakings  of  the  National  Women's  Trade 
Union  League  is  the  School  for  Active  Workers  in  the 
Labor  Movement,  opened  in  1916  at  the  headquarters  of  the 
League  in  Chicago.  This  school  provides  a  year's  training 
for  women  trade  unionists  recommended  by  local  unions 
and  approved  by  the  executive  board ;  its  object  is  chiefly 
to  develop  women  organizers.  The  course  has  been  given 
partly  in  cooperation  with  the  University  of  Chicago  and 
Northwestern  University,  and  has  comprised  industrial  his- 
tory, women  in  the  labor  movement,  judicial  decisions  re- 
garding labor,  trade  agreements,  legislation  aflfecting  women 
and  children,  parliamentary  and  office  practice,  labor  or- 

*  See  Emilie  J.  Hutchinson.  JVomen's  Wages,  especially  Chapter 
7  (1919).  The  New  Position  of  Women  in  American  Industry; 
Industrial  Opportunities  and  Training  for  Women  and  Girls.  Wom- 
en's Bureau  Bulletins  12,  13  (1920). 


220       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

ganization,  and  field  work.  Other  educational  undertakings 
among  women  workers  are  the  education  committee  of  the 
International  Ladies'  Garment  Workers'  Union  and  the  edu- 
cational department  of  the  Ladies'  Waist  Makers'  Local 
Number  25  in  New  York  City,  which  has  a  university 
woman  as  director. 

These  educational  experiments  among  women  trade 
unionists  are  part  of  the  larger  educational  movement  among 
trade  unionists  in  general,  which  has  expressed  itself  in 
England  for  a  number  of  years  in  the  Workers'  Educational 
Association^  and  recently  in  this  country  through  the  estab- 
lishment of  trade  union  colleges,  of  which  those  in  Boston 
and  Washington  are  pioneers.  These  colleges  are  governed 
by  a  board  representing  unions,  teachers,  and  students. 
Many  college  instructors  and  other  professional  workers  are 
on  the  teaching  staffs.  While  the  tendency  in  this  country 
is  to  establish  separate  institutions  rather  than  tutorial 
classes  in  connection  with  the  universities  and  colleges,  as 
in  Great  Britain,  there  is  a  chance  to  work  out  between  the 
trade  union  colleges  and  academic  institutions  some  system 
of  instruction  and  exchange  scholarships,  as  this  book  has 
already  advocated.^  The  new  educational  contacts  between 
higher  education  and  industry  cannot  ignore  the  industrial 
worker  and  remain  democratic.  At  recent  annual  meetings, 
the  American  Federation  of  Labor  has  passed  strong  resolu- 
tions on  the  subject  of  education,  including  a  resolution  that 
all  state  and  local  central  labor  bodies  that  have  not  done  so 
be  urged  to  establish  a  committee  on  education  as  one  of 
their  standing  committees  and  tO'  make  vigorous  efforts  to 
secure  adequate  representation  of  organized  labor  on  all 
boards  of  education.  The  New  York  branch  of  the  Amal- 
gamated Clothing  Workers  is  planning  a  six  hundred  thou- 
sand dollar  building,  which  will  be  devoted  to  business, 
educational,  and  recreational  activities. 

Another  movement  which  is  spreading  among  organized 

'See  Workers'  Educational  Association  Year  Book  (1918).  Adult 
Working-Class  Education  in  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States. 
Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics  Bulletin  No.  271.  Albert  Mansbridge. 
An  Adventure  in   Working-Class  Education    (1920). 

_*In  1920-1921  Amherst  College  is  offering  courses  in  connection 
with  the  Central  Labor  Unions  of  Holyoke  and  Springfield,  Mass. 


INDUSTRIAL  AND  LABOR  SERVICES       221 

workers  and  with  which  professional  women  are  coming  to 
identify  themselves  is  the  cooperative  movement.  The  Co- 
operative League  of  America  acts  as  a  center  of  informa- 
tion and  propaganda.  Its  development  will  be  a  step  in 
the  direction  of  social  and  economic  understanding,  since 
it  emphasizes  the  fact,  too  often  forgotten  by  both  capital 
and  labor,  that  the  industrial  worker  is  a  consumer  as  well 
as  a  producer. 

Fifteen  women  connected  with  industrial  agencies  other 
than  factories  filled  our  schedules.  Their  salaries  ranged 
in  1918  and  1919  from  $1,000  to  $3,500  with  a  median  salary 
of  $1,800.  The  minimum  salary  for  women  in  private  agen- 
cies is  $1,000;  for  women  in  public  agencies,  $1,500;  the 
maximum  and  the  median  are  the  same  in  both  cases  as 
for  the  whole  group.  In  the  private  group  are  a  secretary 
on  relations  with  employers  of  the  industrial  department  of 
the  Young  Women's  Christian  Association;  executive  secre- 
taries of  city  and  state  Consumers'  Leagues  and  of  the  Na- 
tional Society  for  the  Promotion  of  Vocational  TLducation; 
a  staff  worker  in  the  American  Association  for  Labor  Legis- 
lation ;  a  secretary  of  a  branch  of  the  Women's  Trade  Union 
League;  a  research  worker  for  the  National  Industrial  Con- 
ference Board;  the  director  and  assistant  director  of  the 
research  department  of  the  Women's  Educational  and  In- 
dustrial Union.  All  are  college  women ;  two  have  the 
master's  degree;  two,  that  of  doctor  of  philosophy;  several 
others  have  done  graduate  work. 

Their  advice  is  as  follows:  "Secure  technical  training. 
Don't  'fall  into'  work." 

"Secure  as  much  theoretical  training  and  industrial  ex- 
perience as  possible." 

"Get  a  thorough  knowledge  of  economics,  sociology,  and 
statistics,  and  also  familiarity  with  the  various  office  devices 
used  in  statistical  work — slide  rule,  adding  machine,  type- 
writer, ruling  pen,  etc." 

In  the  public  group  are  the  executive  secretary  of  a 
western  state  industrial  welfare  commission,  a  state  factory 
inspector,  the  executive  secretary  of  a  minimum  wage  board, 
a  special  agent  in  the  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics,  an  assist- 
ant to  the  director  of  a  war-emergency  labor  service,  a 


222       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

special  agent  in  charge  of  trade  and  industrial  education  for 
women  and  girls  of  the  Federal  Board  for  Vocational 
Education,  the  director  of  a  vocational  bureau  in  a  city 
public  school  system.  All  but  one  of  these  women  is  a 
college  graduate ;  one  has  the  doctor's  degree ;  one  the  mas- 
ter's degree;  several  have  done  graduate  work.  They  have 
been  college  professors,  directed  public  school  extension 
work,  served  as  secretaries  and  investigators  of  consumers' 
leagues ;  and  advise  as  follows :  "Get  a  knowledge  of  labor 
from  the  inside." 

"Cultivate  tact  and  accuracy,  and  utilize  every  oppor- 
tunity of  learning  about  industrial  problems." 

"Alternate  training  with  actual  employment  or  industrial 
experience  in  order  that  education  and  experience  may 
supplement  each  other." 

"Take  very  thorough  university  and  school  of  civics 
training,  stressing  economics,  sociology,  and  applied  psy- 
chology." 


II 


CHAPTER  XIII 

COMMERCIAL  SERVICES,   OFFICE  AND   MERCANTILE.      WHAT  IS 
A   PROFESSIONAL  SECRETARY? 

This  chapter  deals  with  general  ofifice  and  mercantile 
occupations;  the  next  chapter  with  the  specialized  occupa- 
tions of  banking,  insurance,  public  utilities,  and  real  estate;- 
Chapter  XV  with  the  closely  related  field  of  advertising  and 
publicity.  The  three  groups  of  occupations  have  many 
common  procedures,  and  all  three  form  part  of  the  vast 
commercial  system  by  means  of  which  modern  society  car- 
ries on  the  distribution,  exchange,  and  accumulation  of 
property  in  the  form  of  money,  goods,  land,  buildings, 
and  tools.  Commercial  activities  are  commonly  referred 
to  as  "business,"  although  the  term  properly  covers  manu- 
facturing activities  as  well.  It  has  recently  been  said  that 
"the  beginning  and  the  end  of  every  business  enterprise 
is  a  marketing  problem."  ^  In  a  real  sense,  offices  and 
mercantile  establishments — wholesale,  retail,  importing  and 
exporting,  or  "jobbing" — may  be  compared  to  manufactur- 
ing establishments.  They,  too,  have  specialized  workers, 
supervisors,  and  managers,  they,  too,  have  specialized  ma- 
chines— typewriters,  dictophones,  addressographs,  comptom- 
eters ;  they,  too,  turn  out  a  daily  product — correspondence, 
records,  reports,  sales.  They  are  borrowing  factory  meth- 
ods of  routing  work  and  charting  progress.  Office  manage- 
ment and  sales  management  are  coming  to  be  as  professional 
as  industrial  management.^ 

There  has  never  been  so  much  talk  of  "professional  op- 
portunities" in  the  commercial  world,-  nor  so  lively  an  in- 
clination  among  educated   women   to   "go   into  business." 

*C.  S.  Duncan.    Commercial  Research  (1919),  P.  v. 
'See   Chapter   I    for  a  discussion   of    the  professional   status    of 
commercial  occupations. 

223 


224        WOMEN  PROPTiSSIONAL  WORKERS 

i3ut  hitherto  they  have  had  Hmited  notions  of  what  is  com- 
prised under  the  term,  and  have  thought  of  it  almost  alto- 
gether as  a  matter  of  office  practice.  They  have  considered 
themselves  fully  equipped  w^ith  a  "business  course"  of  from 
three  to  six  months  at  a  commercial  school  or  a  longer 
"secretarial  course"  at  a  vocational  college.  Many  young 
women  retain  this  naive  and  undiscriminating  attitude. 
Others,  through  positions  with  government  war-emergency 
services  and  large  commercial  concerns  operating  under  war 
conditions,  have  gained  a  new  understanding  of  the  range  of 
commercial  organization  and  the  varieties  of  expert  service 
which  it  demands.  Commercial  employers,  like  industrial 
employers,  have  "discovered"  college  women  and  are  begin- 
ning to  recruit  "promising  material,"  "the  upper  ten  per 
cent,"  from  the  women's  colleges  as  they  have  been  doing 
for  the  past  ten  years  from  the  men's  colleges.  They  are 
likewise  studying  their  own  commercial  problems  as  never 
before,  and  establishing  research  bureaus,^  personnel  depart- 
ments, and  training  departments  for  workers  in  service. 
Under  these  circumstances,  it  is  high  time  for  college  women 
to  inquire  seriously  into  positions  of  professional  character 
in  the  commercial  world ;  how  far  they  have,  or  are  likely 
to  have,  access  to  them ;  and  what  qualifications  are  neces- 
sary for  success.  So  far,  the  really  outstanding  women  in 
business  have  for  the  most  part  come  up  from  the  ranks  of 
clerical  or  sales  workers  through  sheer  ability  and  per- 
sistence. 

The  two  main  types  of  commercial  occupation  are  office 
work,  the  function  of  which  is  the  planning,  recording, 
and  coordinating  of  buying  and  selling  operations ;  and 
trade  or  mercantile  work,  the  function  of  which  is  the 
actual  buying  and  selling.  Office  work  is  of  two  kinds — 
quantitative  in  the  form  of  accounts  and  statistics,  and 
non-quantitative  in  the  form  of  correspondence,  reports, 
and  so  on.  Both  require  executives  and  experts  on  the  one 
hand  and  routine  workers,  clerks  and  stenographers,  on  the 
other.  Both  are  calling  for  technical  and  research  experts 
and  for  personnel  or  service  workers  in  increasing  numbers. 
Commercial  and  industrial  organizations  have  many  points 

^  See  C.  S.  Duncan.     Commercial  Research. 


OFFICE  AND  MERCANTILE  SERVICES      225 

in  common.  Clerks,  typists,  stenographers,  bookkeepers,^ 
cashiers,  commercial  machine  and  telephone  and  telegraph 
operators,  retail  salespeople,  correspond  in  the  commercial 
world  to  the  skilled  and  semi-skilled  operatives  of  the 
industrial  world.  Office  managers,  secretaries,  traffic  man- 
agers, floor  managers,  credit  managers,  buyers,  sales-agents, 
correspond  to  the  lower  or  departmental  group  of  factory 
executives.  Superintendents,  general  managers,  merchan- 
dise managers,  sales-managers,  advertising  managers,  em- 
ployment or  personnel  managers,  correspond  to  the  upper  or 
staff  group  of  factory  executives. 

Since  commerce  is  carried  on  so  largely  through  letters, 
records,  documents,  symbols,  figures,  its  routine  processes 
tend  to  become  quite  as  stereotyped,  monotonous,  and  hu- 
manly deadening  and  exhausting  as  the  most  subdivided 
and  mechanical  industrial  operations.  These  last  at  least 
require  dealing  with  concrete  things  for  concrete  uses,  and 
they  are  likely  to  involve  larger  muscular  reactions  than 
those  called  for  in  manipulating  commercial  machines,  in 
figuring,  or  filing.  In  many  respects  the  lower  ranks  of 
clerical  workers  are  looked  upon  as  mere  tools  to  a  degree 
tmequaled  elsewhere.  There  is  an  extraordinary  unreality 
and  detachment  from  life  attendant  upon  continuous  deal- 
ing with  words  and  figures  in  a  mechanical  fashion, — what  in 
the  army  was  despairingly  called  "paper  work."  More- 
over, clerical  workers  lack  the  trade  organizations,  trade 
standards,  and  trade  pride  that  are  a  source  of  support  and 
self-respect  to  skilled  industrial  workers.  Under  the  pinch 
of  present  costs,  commercial  workers  are  trying  to  organize ; 
but  they  suffer  from  having  so  many  among  them  who  look 
upon  their  work  as  a  transient  and  stop-gap  occupation, 
and  who  feel  socially  superior  to  industrial  workers.  The 
Federal  Employees'  Union,  has,  however,  perceptibly  altered 
the  attitude  of  government  clerks.  In  both  Great  Britain 
and  this  country  representation  of  civil-service  workers  in 
the  management  of  their  working  conditions  is  being  ad- 
vocated. One  of  the  tasks  ahead  of  professional  workers 
in  the  commercial  field  is  to  devise  with  clerical  workers 
provisions  for  reducing  or  counteracting  the  deiiumanizing 
nature  of  their  work.     Industrial  fatigue  has  been  studied 


226       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

far  more  carefully  than  commercial  fatigue.  In  the  solu- 
tion of  this  problem  professional  women  may  well  take  an 
important  part;  and  they  need  to  inform  themselves  thor- 
oughly regarding  every  group  of  commercial  workersi.^ 
They  have  very  generally  clung  to  secretarial,  managerial, 
and  expert  positions. 

In  1910,  65.8  per  cent  of  all  clerical  workers  were  men; 
34.2  per  cent  were  women.  Of  stenographers  and  typists, 
82.1  per  cent  were  women  and  17.9  per  cent  were  men; 
of  clerks,  83.3  per  cent  were  men  and  16.7  per  cent  were 
women ;  of  bookkeepers,  cashiers,  and  accountants,  60.3 
per  cent  were  men  and  39.7  per  cent  were  women.  Although 
clerical  workers  are  not  themselves  professional,  their  dis- 
tribution is  pertinent  to  our  discussion  as  showing  the 
different  doorways  through  which  men  and  women  com- 
mercial workers  advance  to  positions  of  professional  respon- 
sibility. Miss  Stevens's  study  of  boys  and  girls  in  commicr- 
cial  work  made  in  1916  as  part  of  the  Cleveland  Education 
Survey  bears  out  the  census  figures,  and  discusses  their 
significance.  It  finds  among  commercial  executives  96  per 
cent  men  and  6  per  cent  women,  and  draws  the  conclusion 
that  the  vast  majority  of  men  reach  administrative  positions 
through  other  routes  than  the  route  of  stenography ;  that 
clerkships  offer  a  better  chance  of  learning  the  business,  and 
are  far  more  open  avenues  of  promotion.  "Shorthand 
has  indeed  been  the  key  to  that  future  which  business 
opened  to  girls ;  but  shorthand  for  boys  has  proved  a  key 
which  as  time  goes  on  unlocks  fewer  and  fewer  of  the 
doors  they  want  to  go  through." 

It  cannot  of  course  be  argued  that  men  have  reached 
these  higher  positions  solely  because  they  have  refused  to 
study  stenography.  The  division  of  clerical  functions  be- 
tween men  and  women  is  due  to  a  variety  of  causes.  Women 
began  to  enter  commercial  life  at  about  the  time  when  the 

^  See  Commercial  Occupations.  Opportunity  Monograph  No.  23. 
Federal  Board  for  Vocational  Education  (1919).  Oflfice  Employees. 
Descriptions  of  Occupations.  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics  (1919). 
May  Allinson.  The  Public  Schools  and  Women  in  Oflice  Service 
(1914).  Bertha  M.  Stevens.  Boys  and  Girls  in  Commercial  Work 
in  Cleveland  (1916) ;  Private  Commercial  Schools  in  New  York 
City  (1918). 


OFFICE  AND  MERCANTILE  SERVICES      227 

typewriter  was  put  upon  the  market  and  systems  of  short- 
hand were  perfected,  and  naturally  engaged  in  a  new  type  of 
work  not  yet  preempted  by  men.  It  required,  moreover,  a 
detailed  skill  of  the  sort  in  which  women,  rightly  or  wrongly, 
have  been  considered  particular!}^  apt.  Through  stenography 
and  typing  women  have  gained  a  foothold  in  commercial  oc- 
cupations that  they  could  have  secured  in  no  other  way. 
Through  these  routine  skills,  some  able  women  have  ob- 
tained an  insight  into  commercial  organization  and  opera- 
tion that  has  won  for  them  advancement  to  more  important 
posts.  But  the  days  are  fast  passing  when  the  office  boy, 
the  junior  clerk,  or  the  stenographer  with  little  education 
can  forge  ahead  and  become  a  manager  or  an  official  of 
the  company.  For  both  men  and  women  advancement  in 
business  is  coming  to  depend  upon  thorough  preparation 
plus  successful  experience.  While  it  cannot  be  said  that 
all  doors  in  business  are  as  yet  wide  open  to  women,  they 
are  at  least  ajar,  and  business  men  are  even  peering  curi- 
ously through  them  to  see  how  many  women  are  really 
prepared  to  enter  and  to  shoulder  their  full  share  of  re- 
sponsibility. It  is  therefore  incumbent  upon  educated  women 
looking  forward  to  "business  careers"  to  ask  themselves 
how  far  they  should  continue  to  use  the  road  of  stenog- 
raphy, to  what  positions  of  a  professional  type  it  leads, 
and  what  other  roads  are  now  open  to  them  or  ready 
to  be  broken. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  stenography  has  been  the  road 
to  the  position  of  private  secretary,  the  chief  goal  of 
the  educated  woman  in  the  recent  past.  In  fact,  so  great  has 
been  the  prestige  of  the  title  "secretary"  that  it  has  been 
eagerly  appropriated  by  many  a  stenographer ;  and  the  im- 
plications of  the  term  and  the  boundaries  of  the  position 
have  been  exceedingly  ill-defined.  Positions  and  training 
courses  have  been  called  "secretarial"  that  have  had  slender 
claims  to  professional  standing.  But  of  late  there  have  been 
efforts  to  distinguish  clearly  between  the  stenographer  and 
the  secretary  anu  to  establish  the  professional  character  of 
the  secretarial  worker. 

The  monograph  on  Commercial  Occupations  of  the  Fed- 
eral Board  for  Vocational  Education  says:  "Executives  in 


228       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

responsible  positions  are  finding  it  necessary  more  and 
more  to  rely  upon  efficient  secretarial  help.  Such  an  execu- 
tive must  generally  have  some  assistant  who  is  thoroughly 
familiar  with  every  detail  of  his  activities,  and  is  able  to 
assume  responsibility  for  innumerable  details  connected  with 
the  day's  work.  .  ,  .  There  is  a  wide  gap  between  secretarial 
and  stenographic  duties.  Skill  in  shorthand  and  typewrit- 
ing is  now  recognized  as  desirable  for  the  secretary,  but 
the  possession  of  this  skill  does  not  insure  secretarial  effi- 
ciency. .  .  .  It  is  quite  likely  that  a  period  of  apprentice- 
ship as  a  stenographer  will  continue  to  be  a  very  desirable 
part  of  one's  training  for  the  higher  duties  of  a  secretarial 
position.  .  .  .  The  trained  secretary  relieves  the  executive 
of  all  detail  by  keeping  him  informed  as  to  the  important 
happenings  in  the  business  world  that  may  be  of  particular 
interest,  ...  by  gathering  data  for  the  preparation  of 
papers  and  speeches,  by  standing  between  him  and  the  pub- 
lic ..  .  and  in  every  way  by  keeping  the  executive's  time 
free  for  the  more  important  managerial  responsibilities  de- 
volving upon  him."^ 

This  and  other  descriptions  which  might  be  quoted  em- 
phasize the  point  that  a  secretary's  principal  function  is 
that  of  representing  the  executive,  that  he  is  a  person  with 
delegated  but  responsible  executive  duties.  They  are  writ- 
ten with  men  secretaries  in  mind,  and  call  attention  to  the 
important  executive  positions  to  which  secretaryships  may 
lead.  This  use  of  secretarial  positions  is  far  less  frequent 
for  women  than  for  men.  In  fact,  women  have  considered 
such  positions  as  goals ;  men  have  considered  them  as  step- 
ping-stones. A  much  higher  type  of  woman  than  of  man 
has  been  willing  to  be  permanently  a  secretary,  and  has 
consequently  been  in  steady  demand.  This  difference  in 
the  secretarial  appeal  to  men  and  to  women  is  reflected  in 
the  fact  that  there  are  secretarial  courses  of  university  and 
college  grade  for  women  and  no  similar  courses  for  men. 

The  recognition  of  secretarial  work  as  a  distinct  and 
special  profession  for  women  marks  a  stage  in  their  busi- 
ness evolution  beyond  which  they  are  already  beginning 
to  pass.  The  fact  that  women  are  nov/  holding  important 
*  Vocational  Rehabilitation  Series,  Number  23  (1919). 


OFFICE  AND  MERCANTILE  SERVICES     229 

posts  under  the  title  of  "assistants  to  executives"  means 
that  the  business  world  is  making  a  last  stand  before  ad- 
mitting them  to  full  executive  responsibility.  But  it  also 
means  that  women  must  ask  themselves  whether  secretarial 
training  as  now  given  is  the  best  approach  to  management. 
An  efficient  secretary  to  an  executive  undoubtedly  shoulders 
responsibility  of  a  sort,  and  has  daily  opportunities  to  ex- 
ercise quick-wittedness,  resourcefulness,  good  humor,  and 
tact.  She  must  anticipate  situations,  keep  her  head  in 
emergencies,  and  act  always  as  a  buffer  between  her  su- 
perior and  the  pressure  of  people  and  details.  She  needs 
a  trained  mind,  an  acquaintance  with  sources  of  informa- 
tion, and  a  knowledge  of  the  operations  of  the  business 
with  which  she  is  connected.  But  when  all  is  said,  she 
remains  an  intermediary  without  final  responsibility  and 
with  limited  independence.  She  is  at  best  only  a  "detail 
executive"  and  not  an  "idea  executive."  Her  opportunities 
even  for  intellectual  development  depend  largely  upon  the 
personality  of  her  employer;  and  she  lacks  the  stimulus  of 
sharing  in  the  working  out  of  group  plans  of  action.  Her 
position  is  somewhat  like  that  of  the  bedside  nurse. 

In  the  past,  young  college  women  have  often  chosen  sec- 
retarial work  because  of  the  brevity  and  cheapness  of  the 
training,  its  assurance  of  steady  if  moderate  financial  re- 
turns, its  combination  of  a  new  range  of  experiences  and 
more  or  less  sheltered  conditions.  Few  of  them  have  gone 
into  it  in  a  fully  professional  spirit,  and  many  have  failed 
to  realize  that  to  raise  it  to  a  professional  level  they 
must  command  a  special  subject  matter  as  well  as  certain 
purely  instrumental  skills.  A  young  woman  who  is  "secre- 
tary" now  to  a  publisher,  now  to  a  department-store  super- 
intendent, now  to  a  wholesale  woolen  merchant,  now  to  the 
executive  of  a  social  agency,  is  not  a  professional  worker 
in  any  real  sense.  To-day  with  larger  commercial  prospects 
before  women  and  with  various  "training  in  service"  sys- 
tems in  operation  in  progressive  commercial  establishments, 
secretarial  work  ceases  to  be  an  exclusive  or  preferred  line 
of  advancement  for  either  men  or  women.  In  fact,  it  has 
certain  psychological  disadvantages.  A  recent  book  on  the 
jtraining  of  a  salesman  calls  attention  to  this.     "The  secre- 


230       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

tarial  type  of  man  and  the  executive  type  o£  man  are 
almost  the  exact  opposites,  but  it  is  sometimes  very  difficult 
to  detect  the  secretarial  type  and  avoid  his  appointment  to 
executive  posts.  Frequently  he  makes  a  better  first  impres- 
sion than  the  executive  type.  .  .  ,  Perhaps  plausibility  is  one 
of  the  symptoms  of  the  secretarial  type  of  man.  I  rather 
think  it  is.  .  .  .  If,  when  you  ask  him  for  a  definite  result, 
a  man  merely  describes  the  methods  he  proposes  to  employ, 
you  can  be  pretty  certain  that  he  is  the  secretarial  type  of 
man  who  in  the  event  of  failure  will  say,  'Well,  I  did  all  I 
could.  It  isn't  up  to  me.  My  skirts  are  clear.'  On  the  other 
hand,  the  true  executive  is  seldom  very  ready  with  alibis 
or  excuses.  When  his  ship  sinks,  he  usually  goes  down  with 
it — his  colors  nailed  to  the  mast."  ^ 

On  the  other  hand,  secretarial  work,  while  no  longer 
the  sole  nor  the  highest  opportunity  for  women  in  business, 
affords  a  certain  amount  of  professional  scope  and  is  gen- 
erally accessible  to  educated  women.  Women  who  are  de- 
tail-minded and  quicker  to  anticipate  and  carry  out  the  ideas 
of  others  than  they  are  to  think  for  themselves  are  better 
fitted  to  be  secretaries  than  they  are  to  be  managers  or 
research  workers.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  dependable  specifi- 
cations and  tests  for  the  three  types  may  be  worked  out 
before  long.  People  show  a  distressing  tendency  to  ascribe 
to  themselves  "executive  ability."  Mr.  Maxwell  observes  in 
his  amusing  chapter,  "Wanted — A  Man  with  Executive 
Ability" :  "In  hiring  men  I  have  frequently  asked  the  ques- 
tion 'Do  you  feel  that  you  have  native  executive  ability?' 
I  do  not  recall  that  I  ever  received  a  negative  answer." 

Not  all  secretaries  by  any  means  are  attached  to  com- 
mercial organizations.  There  are  secretaries  to  executives 
of  educational,  social,  and  governmental  organizations  and 
departments ;  secretaries  to  professional  practitioners — min- 
isters, doctors,  lawyers,  writers,  and  so  on;  so-called  "social" 
secretaries  to  persons  of  wealth  and  leisure.  Executive  or 
general  secretaries  of  boards  and  associations  perform  ad- 
ministrative and  managerial  duties  rather  than  those  of  a 
secretary  proper.     But  no  secretary  is  entitled  to  consider 

MVilliam  Maxwell,  The  Training  of  a  Salesman  (1919),  pp. 
196-198. 


OFFICE  AND  MERCANTILE  SERVICES     231 

herself  a  professional  person  who  does  not  possess  in  addi- 
tion of  her  clerical  skills  a  background  knowledge  and  a 
thorough  practical  familiarity  with  the  special  field  in  which 
she  is  working.  An  intensive  study  of  opportunities  for 
women  in  secretarial  service  was  issued  in  1914,  based  on 
records  of  1,500  women  who  had  taken  the  secretarial  course 
at  Simmons  College  or  were  registered  in  the  Appointment 
Bureau  of  the  Women's  Educational  and  Industrial  Union 
of  Boston.^  It  shows  the  prevalent  loose  use  of  the  term 
"secretary,"  the  distribution  in  the  several  fields,  the  edu- 
cation and  the  remuneration  received.  A  similar  study  made 
to-day  would  undoubtedly  reveal  a  clearer  conception  of 
secretarial  duties,  a  larger  number  of  positions  of  approxi- 
mately professional  character,  and  a  substantially  higher 
level  of  salaries.^ 

Although  stenography  is  as  yet  a  necessary  part  of  the 
equipment  of  any  woman  entering  the  secretarial  field,  its 
importance  is  likely  to  be  overestimated  even  there.  The 
more  a  woman's  duties  are  really  those  of  a  professional 
secretary,  the  less  likely  she  is  to  be  called  upon  to  take 
dictation  herself.  In  a  large  office,  she  has  stenographers 
under  her  or  at  the  call  of  herself  or  her  employer.  In 
this  case,  she  merely  directs  them,  and  supervises  the  results. 
In  a  small  office,  or  with  a  private  employer,  she  may  some- 
times have  to  do  stenographic  work;  but  if  she  is  really  a 
secretary,  she  is  herself  responsible  for  a  large  part  of  the 
correspondence,  submitting  the  completed  letters  for  ap- 
proval and  signature,  or  sometimes  sending  them  under  her 
own  name.  There  are  those  who  think  that  the  dictaphone, 
the  stenotype,  and  other  appliances  are  making  stenography 
itself  of  diminishing  importance.  There  is  no  doubt,  how- 
ever, that  every  secretary — in  fact,  every  professional 
woman — should  use  the  typewriter  with  facility.  It  is  like- 
wise of  advantage  to  know  enough  of  office  practices  and  the 
operation  of  the  various  office  machines  to  supervise  work 

'  Vocations  for  the  Trained  JVoinan.  Part  2.  Opportunities  in 
Secretarial  Service  (1914). 

^  The  Bulletin  of  the  National  Committee  of  Bureaus  of  Occupa- 
tions for  October,  1920,  is  devoted  to  secretarial  work,  and  contains 
valuable  reports  from  the  various  bureaus  and  "case  histories"  of 
women  secretaries. 


232       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

intelligently  and  to  estimate  the  amount  of  time  necessary 
to  perform  it. 

Closely  allied  to  the  secretary  and  usually  with  similar 
training  is  the  correspondent,  who  dictates  herself  or  super- 
vises all  letters  going  out  from  an  office.    In  some  establish- 
ments, no  piece  of  first-class  mail  goes  out  without  being 
reviewed  by  one  person.    Export  and  import  houses,  banks 
with  foreign  branches  or  connections,  all  commercial  organ- 
izations concerned  with  foreign  trade,  employ  workers  with 
a  command  of  languages  as  foreign  correspondents.     The 
war  has  enormously  stimulated  American  interest  in  foreign 
trade,  and  widened  the  demand  for  well  equipped  workers. 
The    National    City   Bank    has   trained    carefully    selected 
groups  of  young  college  men  as  managers  of  branches  in 
foreign  countries  and  groups  of  young  college  women  as 
correspondents.    A  foreign  correspondent  must  have  a  thor- 
ough knowledge  of  the  particular  kind  of  trade  and  the 
particular  country  with  which  she  is  dealing;  and  ordinary 
college  courses  in  modern  languages,  even  if  topped  by  a 
course  in  "commercial  usage,"  and  training  in  stenography, 
will  not  equip  her  to  advance  far  on  the  road  from  routine 
to  responsible  commercial  work.     She  needs  a   far  more 
fundamental   preparation   involving  as    rich   a   background 
knowledge  as  possible  of  the  language,  customs,  and  social 
psychology    of    the    foreign    country,    special    professional 
courses  in  the  principles  and  techniques  of  foreign  trade, 
and  actual  apprenticeship  with  an  organization  engaged  in 
this  type  of  business.     For  the  present,  this  apprenticeship 
is  likely  to  be  most  easily  secured  through  routine  experi- 
ence as  stenographer.     But  with  the  many  new  courses  in 
foreign  trade  now  being  ofifered  by  universities,  there  will 
undoubtedly  be  cooperative  training  arrangements  with  busi- 
ness organizations  by  means  of  which  there  will  be  more 
direct  and  less  wasteful  modes  of  approach  to  positions  of 
the  professional  correspondent  type.    Meanwhile,  the  details 
of  business  usage  in  a  foreign  language  can  be  easily  and 
quickly  secured  by  any  one  with  a  good  general  knowledge 
of  the  tongue.     College  "commercial  courses"  in  a  foreign 
language  are  therefore  largely  a  waste  of  time.    They  take 
time  from  the  larger  preparation  which  only  the  college  can 


OFFICE  AND  MERCANTILE  SERVICES     233 

provide,  and  usually  prove  not  wholly  applicable  to  the  con- 
crete commercial  situations  encountered  later. 
There  is  a  widespread  belief  among  commercial  employers, 
i  partly  a  superstition,  partly  founded  on  cases  in  their  ex- 
perience, that  college  women,  like  clerical  women,  are  a 
shifting  labor  supply,  looking  upon  their  work  as  a  "stop- 
gap" occupation  and  leaving  it  on  account  of  marriage  or 
from  mere  whim.  While  they  complain  that  college  women 
are  not  willing  to  "begin  at  the  bottom"  as  college  men  are 
learning  to  do,  they  refrain  from  holding  out  to  them  as  they 
do  to  college  men,  the  assurance  that  by  so  doing  they  may 
"come  out  at  the  top."  It  is  high  time  for  some  one  of  the 
organizations  for  commercial  research  to  study  the  "turn- 
over" of  comparable  groups  of  college  men  and  college 
women  and  to  discover  to  what  extent  generalizations  based 
on  clerical  women  are  justified  in  the  case  of  professional 
women.  With  the  same  prospects  of  advancement,  women 
are  likely  to  approximate  men's  stability  in  employment. 
At  present  the  entire  situation  is  in  a  transitional  state,  com- 
plicated by  all  sorts  of  "folkways"  and  leisure  notions  re- 
garding women. 

Meanwhile,  there  is  ground  for  at  least  a  strong  suspicion 
that  the  massing  of  women  in  stenography  stands  in  the 
way  of  their  advancement  to  positions  of  responsibility. 
A  stenographer  with  a  college  degree  is  no  more  a  pro- 
fessional worker  than  a  stenographer  without  a  college 
degree ;  and  she  may  sometimes  be  kept  from  advancement 
because  of  the  very  fact  that  she  is  so  useful  to  her  em- 
ployer where  she  is.  For  an  educated  woman  to  become 
an  expert  stenographer  is  to  run  a  real  risk  of  exploitation. 
In  his  sprightly  chapter  on  the  Fifty-Dollar  a  Week  Girl, 
Mr.  Maxwell  says:  "If  I  were  a  girl,  I  should  not  study 
stenography,  but  if  I  were  a  stenographer,  I  should  study 
advertising."  A  successful  woman  in  an  investment  house 
gives  this  advice:  "Let  me  say  in  capital  letters  don't 
LKARN  STENOGRAPHY  jif  you  have  any  ambition  to  go 
beyond  it.  Stenographers,  because  of  the  noise  of  their 
machines,  are  generally  kept  together  in  a  sort  of  harem 
remote  from  the  pulse  of  business.  Their  work  is  too 
mechanical  to  teach  them  much.     They   are  too  busy  to 


234       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

study  and  too  well  paid  to  break  away  into  other  depart- 
ments, most  of  which  pay  less  well  for  the  first  few  years."  ^ 
Professionally,  stenography  appears  to  be  governed  by  a 
law  of  diminishing  returns,  and  in  most  cases  to  be  a 
"blind-alley"  occupation  for  the  well-trained  and  ambitious 
woman.  If  she  wishes  to  acquire  it  as  a  useful  commercial 
skill,  she  should  be  under  no  illusions  as  to  its  adequacy  in 
itself  as  a  means  of  professional  advancement. 

Well  organized  commercial  firms  are  rapidly  establish- 
ing definite  courses  of  instruction  for  "learners  in  service," 
and  are  on  the  lookout  for  promising  young  men  and  women 
with  good  educational  background  and  preferably  some 
professional  preparation  in  commerce,  business  administra- 
tion, and  finance.  Educated  women  planning  a  business 
career  should  expect  to  serve  a  period  of  apprenticeship,  and 
should  make  every  effort  to  secure  their  initial  positions 
with  firms  which  offer  these  courses  or  at  least  make  a 
practice  of  trying  out  beginners  by  "rotating"  them  through 
their  several  departments.  It  is  no  less  important  in  busi- 
ness than  in  social  work  or  industry  to  become  connected 
at  first  with  an  organization  which  has  a  policy  of  educa- 
tional supervision  and  systematic  promotion.  Just  as  young 
college  women  are  nowadays  operating  machines  in  factories 
as  a  necessary  part  of  their  training  for  managerial  or  expert 
positions  and  selling  behind  counters  in  department  stores 
as  a  necessary  part  of  their  training  for  positions  as  "educa- 
tional directors,"  so  they  must  be  prepared  to  serve  for  a 
definite  period  as  clerks  or  bookkeepers  or  salesmen  "in  the 
shop"  or  "on  the  road,"  as  a  necessary  part  of  their  train- 
ing for  responsible  commercial  positions  of  various  sorts. 
In  such  a  recognized  apprenticeship,  a  command  of  any  of 
the  routine  office  skills — not  only  stenography  and  typing  but 
also  filing,  stencil-cutting,  and  above  all  operating  of  the 
comptometer  or  other  computing  machines — gains  a  new 
kind  of  importance  as  giving  the  learner  an  understanding 
of  the  details  of  office  work  and  also  of  the  minds  of  fellow 
workers. 

Since  the  beginning  of  the  war  there  has  been  a  remark- 

*  Elizabeth  E.  Cook.    Opportunities  for  Women  in  Finance.    Jour- 
nal Association   Collegiate  Alumnce.     Vol.    XL 


OFFICE  AND  MERCANTILE  SERVICES     235 

able  increase  in  the  use  of  computing  machines  in  financial 
and  statistical  work.  The  old-time  bookkeeper  has  prac- 
tically disappeared  in  large  organizations,  and  has  been 
superseded  by  the  accountant-bookkeeper,  a  professionally 
trained  worker  in  charge  of  a  number  of  machine  operators. 
Thus  commerce  like  industry  is  becoming  more  and  more  a 
matter  of  specialized  machine  operation  on  the  one  hand 
and  professional  direction  on  the  other.  With  the  prospect 
of  both  groups  of  workers  being  represented  in  manage- 
ment, it  becomes  imperative  for  each  to  understand  the 
other  and  especially  for  those  who  manage  to  have  had 
some  genuine  working  experience  among  those  who  operate. 
Hitherto  the  woman  office  manager  has  been  recruited 
principally  from  the  rank  and  file  of  clerical  workers  on 
the  score  of  personality  and  ability  to  direct  and  supervise 
others.  She  has  had  the  advantage  of  knowing  at  first- 
hand the  details  of  office  practice  and  the  ways  of  the 
people  under  her.  But  like  the  old  type  of  industrial  fore- 
man, she  has  had  inevitably  a  narrow  outlook,  and  like  him 
has  sometimes  tended  to  become  a  hard  and  petty  "boss." 
With  the  development  of  the  science  of  business  organiza- 
tion and  administration,  the  standardizing  of  office  pro- 
cedures, and  the  employment  of  large  numbers  of  routine 
clerical  workers,  the  position  of  office  manager  is  attract- 
ing vigorous-minded  and  resourceful  young  women  to 
whom  secretarial  work  seems  a  rather  pallid  occupation. 
To  what  extent  professional  office  managers  will  continue 
to  approach  the  position  through  one  of  the  office  skills  re- 
mains to  be  seen.  They  will  certainly  need  some  kind  of 
office  apprenticeship  as  well  as  the  larger  training  of  a 
school  of  business  administration.  In  commerce  as  in  in- 
dustry there  is  need  of  an  exchange  of  views  and  training 
between  workers  with  only  an  educational  equipment  and 
workers  with  only  a  practical  equipment.  The  schools  of 
commerce  and  business  of  university  grade  are  likely  tc 
make  cooperative  training  arrangements  with  commercial 
organizations  as  the  schools  of  engineering  and  economics 
are  making  them  with  the  industries.  Meanwhile;  the  new 
Federation  of  Business  and  Professional  Women's  Clubs 
could  perform  no  more  useful  service  than  to  form  a  small 


236       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

committee  of  women  with  large  practical  knowledge  of  busi- 
ness management  and  women  with  professional  training  in 
commerce  and  finance  to  work  out  a  tentative  program  of 
class  work  and  field  work  for  prospective  office  managers 
and  other  business  executives  and  also  to  encourage  suc- 
cessful business  women  without  adequate  educational  back- 
ground to  enroll  in  special  courses  dealing  with  problems 
of  business  administration.  There  is  a  growing  demand  for 
expert  office  organizers. 


Expert  accountancy  is  a  commercial  occupation  of  pro- 
fessional standing  and  of  increasing  importance.  It  offers 
a  highly  specialized  type  of  work  to  women  who  are  inter- 
ested in  modern  commercial  movements  and  methods,  but 
who  are  not  strongly  drawn  or  temperamentally  suited  to 
the  difficult  adjustments  of  management.  Probably  for  the 
present  women  will  have  to  meet  fewer  obstacles  on  account 
of  their  sex  in  these  expert  services  of  a  non-executive  char- 
acter. A  recent  bulletin  of  vocational  information  says : 
"Accounting  is  a  broader  term  than  bookkeeping.  The  ac- 
countant is  called  upon  to  install  the  system  of  records  while 
the  bookkeeper  enters  the  figures  which  pertain  to  various 
transactions  as  they  occur.  The  accountant  is  the  systema- 
tizer  and  organizer  and  finally  the  auditor  who  establishes 
the  accuracy  of  the  work  or  detects  the  errors  in  it.  The 
science  of  accounting  as  distinguished  from  bookkeeping 
is  comparatively  new  ...  In  large  modern  manufacturing 
or  mercantile  establishments,  with  many  departments  in- 
tricately related  with  each  other  and  with  the  world  out- 
side, the  points  where  economies  may  be  effected  or  losses 
develop  become  very  numerous  and  often  difficult  to  detect. 
It  is  this  magnitude  and  complexity  of  modern  business 
which  calls  for  the  aid  of  the  trained  accountant."  ^ 

The  highest  type  of  accountant  is  the  certified  public  ac- 
countant who  passes  difficult  state  examinations,  and  re- 
ceives the  degree  of  C.  P.  A.  Since  1896,  forty-two  states 
have  established   these   examinations   by   law.     There   are 

*  Vocational  Information.  Leland  Stanford  Junior  University, 
June,  1919. 


OFFICE  AND  MERCANTILE  SERVICES     237 

local  and  national  societies  of  certified  public  accountants. 
Many  of  these  public  accountants  practice  independently 
or  as  consultants  in  the  same  way  as  doctors,  lawyers,  and 
architects.  Others  are  employed  by  large  corporations. 
Under  them  are  junior  and  senior  accountants,  who  have 
had  a  certain  amount  of  training  and  experience,  but  who 
have  not  yet  been  certified.  Many  students  of  accountancy 
take  vacation  positions  in  accounting  offices  as  the  practical 
part  of  their  preparation,  or  continue  their  professional 
study  while  regularly  employed.  The  two  main  types  of 
accountant  are  the  general  expert  accountant,  who  fre- 
quently serves  as  auditor  or  comptroller,  and  the  cost  ac- 
countant, who  is  employed  by  manufacturing  or  public- 
utility  corporations  to  analyze  the  costs  of  production  or 
service.  These  methods  are  also  being  applied  to  the  oper- 
ating, purchasing,  and  sales  departments  of  commercial  or- 
ganizations. Modern  systems  of  "functional  accounting" 
and  budget  making  have  been  worked  out  by  such  agencies 
as  bureaus  of  municipal  or  governmental  research,  and  are 
being  adopted  by  municipal,  state,  and  federal  departments 
of  government. 

The  federal  government  has  need  of  many  more  account- 
ants than  it  used  before  the  war.  Foreign  loans,  bond  is- 
sues, and  new  taxes  call  for  a  small  army  of  workers. 
Recent  civil  service  examinations  have  been  held  for  ac- 
counting and  statistical  clerks  at  salaries  ranging  from  $1,200 
to  $1,620;  for  accountants  for  the  Federal  Trade  Commis- 
sion at  salaries  from  $1,800  to  $3,600;  for  examiners  of 
accounts  for  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission  at  sal- 
aries from  $2,220  to  $3,000;  for  investigators  in  accounting 
and  office  management  at  salaries  from  $2,000  to  $3,000;  for 
experts  to  devise  new  systems,  or  to  verify  income  and 
excess-profits  tax  returns  for  the  Treasury  Department; 
for  senior  and  junior  cost  accountants ;  for  resident  and 
traveling  auditors.  During  January  and  February  1919,  4 
women  and  244  men  were  appointed  to  accountancy  positions 
under  the  federal  government,  the  women's  salaries  rang- 
ing from  $1,400  to  $2,000 ;  the  men's  from  $1,200  to  $5,000.  ^ 

*  Women  in  the  Government  Service.    Bulletin  No.  8.    Women's 
Bureau  (1920). 


238       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

A  woman  head  of  a  division  in  the  Bureau  of  Internal 
Revenue  of  the  Treasury  Department  is  receiving  a  salary 
of  $5,000.  State  and  municipal  governments  likewise  re- 
quire accountants.  The  complexities  of  the  new  taxes  have 
created  a  demand  for  accountants  who  are  specialists  in 
taxation.  The  prospective  federal  Budget  Bureau  and  other 
applications  of  budget  making  suggest  opportunities. 

As  these  figures  suggest,  women  are  only  beginning  to  go 
into  accounting  as  a  profession.  But  their  number  is  in- 
creasing; and  there  are  a  few  women  certified  public  ac- 
countants. The  lower  salaries  received  by  women  are  in 
large  measure  due  to  their  inferior  training  and  brief  ex- 
perience. Thoroughly  equipped  women  stand  a  good  chance 
of  salaries  equal  to  those  of  men  of  similar  qualifications. 
It  is  highly  important  for  women  to  keep  in  mind  that  ac- 
counting techniques  are  only  the  instruments  of  the 
profession,  and  can  be  successfully  used  only  by  workers 
with  an  understanding  of  their  background  and  purpose  and 
with  a  keen  interest  in  the  problems  to  be  solved  by  their 
means.  Mere  accounting  clerks  have  little  claim  to  pro- 
fessional status.  The  ability  to  interpret  results  and  to  in- 
corporate them  in  clear  and  cogent  reports  is  essential  to 
the  professional  accountant. 

In  the  past,  it  has  been  difficult  to  draw  the  line  between 
two  comparatively  new  commercial  occupations,  that  of 
filing  expert  or  supervisor  and  that  of  business  librarian. 
Modern  library  techniques  and  appliances  have  been  adapted 
to  the  filing  of  business  correspondence,  documents,  and  rec- 
ords of  all  sorts;  and  modern  business  has  increasingly 
made  use  of  reference  material  in  the  form  of  catalogues, 
trade  journals,  government  and  commercial  reports  and 
statistics.  In  many  cases  women  with  library  training  have 
successfully  handled  both  the  installing  and  the  supervision 
of  a  modern  filing  department  and  the  management  of  a 
business  reference  Hbrary  for  the  use  of  the  executive  and 
expert  staff  of  the  organization.  During  the  war  librarians 
were  in  great  demand  for  filing  service  in  government 
departments.  But  with  the  amplification  of  business  filing 
systems  and  methods  on  the  one  hand  and  of  information 


OFFICE  AND  MERCANTILE  SERVICES      239 

and  research  departments  on  the  other,  there  is  coming  to 
be  a  clearer  distinction  between  filing  supervisors  and 
librarians.  Filing  is  seen  to  be  an  arm  of  office  service; 
librarianship  an  arm  of  staff  service.  The  filing  expert 
needs  a  thorough  understanding  of  business  administration 
and  office  practice  in  general  and  of  the  business  with  which 
she  is  connected  in  particular,  rather  than  a  full  Hbrary 
training.  The  techniques  of  filing  and  indexing  she  may 
acquire  at  a  school  of  filing,  a  number  of  which  now  exist, 
or  through  apprenticeship  in  a  good  filing  department.  All 
manufacturers  of  filing  apparatus  issue  bulletins  on  the 
subject,  and  there  is  a  special  journal.  Filing,  published  in 
New  York.  The  Library  Bureau  has  recently  issued  a 
bulletin,  Filing  as  a  Profession  for  Women  (1919).  A 
woman  who  is  constantly  studying  the  filing  problems  of  her 
firm  and  seeking  to  improve  its  system,  and  who  supervises  a 
corps  of  filing  clerks,  may  be  said  to  occupy  a  position  with 
many  professional  responsibilities. 

The  business  librarian,  however,  needs  a  professional  li- 
brary training  and  specialization  in  commercial  materials 
and  methods.  Her  work  more  and  more  tends  to  ally  itself 
with  the  departments  of  planning  and  research,  information 
and  publicity.  In  smaller  organizations,  she  herself  some- 
times does  statistical  work,  or  prepares  reports,  trade  cata- 
logs and  other  publicity  material.  She  may  be  editor  or  as- 
sistant editor  of  a  "house  organ."  Her  work  has  been  un- 
standardized  and  in  process  of  evolution  but  is  becoming 
more  clearly  defined.  In  the  past,  business  librarianship  has 
been  one  of  the  best  available  ways  for  educated  women  to 
secure  a  thorough  understanding  of  all  sides  of  a  business 
and  one  of  the  best  avenues  of  promotion.  In  the  future, 
it  is  more  likely  to  lead  to  positions  in  research  and  in- 
formation departments  than  to  executive  positions.  But 
it  is  in  itself  a  type  of  special  librarianship  and  of  permanent 
professional  value.  The  business  librarian  needs  to  be 
quick  to  see  the  needs  of  her  organization,  to  have  her 
material  readily  available  for  busy  executives,  and  at  times 
to  call  it  to  their  attention.  (See  Chapter  XVIII.)  She 
needs  to  keep  in  close  touch  with  other  special  libraries  and 
Librarians. 


240       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

Commercial  research  is  a  newer  development  than  in- 
dustrial research,  but  is  following  much  the  same  lines.  It 
may  be  carried  on  by  a  single  organization ;  by  a  group 
of  organizations,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Retail  Research  Asso- 
ciation ;  or  by  special  service  organizations,  such  as  the 
Babson  Statistical  Organization.  It  includes  investigation 
and  information  as  well  as  research  in  the  narrower  sense, 
and  has  for  its  object  the  more  intelligent  and  effective  con- 
duct of  commercial  enterprises  through  a  careful  study  of 
their  methods  of  operation,  a  comparison  with  other  enter- 
prises of  the  same  kind,  and  the  introduction  of  improve- 
ments through  carefully  controlled  experiments.  It  studies 
problems  of  merchandising,  buying,  selling,  and  personnel; 
and  makes  use  of  accounts,  business  statistics,  and  various 
efficiency  and  psychological  tests.  The  attitude  of  mind 
required,  the  methods  of  collecting  and  controlling  facts 
and  working  out  new  theories  and  programs,  do  not  differ 
from  those  necessary  in  investigation  and  research  of  any 
kind.  An  adequate  knowledge  of  commercial  principles, 
facts,  and  practices  can  be  acquired  only  through  profes- 
sional training  of  a  high  type  including  field  training  in  in- 
vestigation and  calling  preferably  for  the  doctor's  degree 
and  at  least  for  a  master's  degree.  The  newness  of  com- 
mercial research  as  well  as  its  character  and  range  may  be 
gathered  from  several  recent  books  on  the  subject.  There 
is  a  growing  demand  for  business  statisticians  who  shall 
be  not  merely  routine  statistical  clerks  but  able  to  plan  and 
interpret  as  well  as  to  collect  and  tabulate  facts.^  Since 
commercial  research  is  only  in  its  lusty  beginnings,  it  offers 
an  especially  promising  field  for  women  of  the  right  type 
who  are  willing  to  take  the  proper  training.  It  is  a  field 
also  in  which  achievement  is  likely  to  be  more  readily  recog- 
nized than  in  the  field  of  commercial  management. 

The  new  ideas  and  practices  in  regard  to  training  both 
routine  and  professional  commercial  workers  provide  a 
larger  opportunity  for  women  in  commercial  education.  It 
is  no  longer  a  matter  of  teaching  stenography,  typewriting, 

'See  Duncan,  Commercial  Research  (1919)  ;  J.  G.  Frederick, 
Business  Research  and  Statistics  (1920)  ;  M.  T.  Copeland,  Business 
Statistics  (1917)- 


II 


OFFICE  AND  MERCANTILE  SERVICES     241 

bookkeeping,  and  the  rudiments  of  ofiBce  practice  in  com- 
mercial high  schools  or  business  schools  run  for  profit. 
Even  in  high  schools,  the  work  of  the  Federal  Board  for 
Vocational  Education,  chambers  of  commerce,  and  other 
agencies  is  making  the  instruction  less  formal ;  and  plans 
are  on  foot  for  part-time  practice  work  in  business  offices. 
The  growth  of  vestibule  and  service  schools  in  business  cor- 
porations is  a  challenge  to  women  of  education  and  experi- 
ence to  work  on  the  many  problems  of  training  in  service.^ 
As  yet,  women  have  taken  practically  no  part  in  the  instruc- 
tion in  university  schools  of  business.  But  as  they  secure 
more  important  commercial  posts,  and  there  are  more 
women  students  in  these  schools,  such  positions  are  likely 
to  open  to  them. 

Professional  preparation  for  commercial  positions  is  rap- 
idly broadening  in  scope,  and  is  to  be  found  in  institutions 
of  several  types:  (i)  higher  institutions  for  women  with 
secretarial  departments  and  special  one-year  courses  for 
graduates  of  academic  colleges — such  as  Simmons  College, 
the  Connecticut  College  for  Women,  Rockford.. Milwaukee- 
Downer,  and  Mills  Colleges,  the  Margaret  Morrison  Car- 
negie School  of  the  Carnegie  Institute,  Drexel  and  Lewis 
Institutes;  (2)  university  schools  of  commerce  and  business 
administration — such  as  the  schools  of  the  universities  of 
California,  Chicago,  Illinois,  Minnesota,  and  Washington, 
the  School  of  Commerce,  Accounts,  and  Finance  of  New 
York  University,  the  Columbia  School  of  Business,  the 
Harvard  Graduate  School  of  Business  Administration;  (3) 
special  higher  business  schools  not  connected  with  univer- 
sities— such  as  the  Alexander  Hamilton  and  Pace  Institutes 
in  New  York  and  the  new  Babson  Institute  near  Boston; 
(4)  university  extension  and  cooperative  courses  for  com- 
mercial workers  already  in  service — such  as  courses  in  for- 
eign trade,  taxation,  finance,  and  so  on,  given  by  New  York, 
Columbia,  and  Boston  Universities;  (5)  courses  given  by 
business  corporations  themselves — such  as  those  of  the 
Larkin  Company  in  Buffalo,  the  rubber  companies,  tiie 
William  Filene  Sons  Company  in  Boston,  the  National  City 

'  See  Publications  of  National  Association  of  Corporation  Schools. 


242       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

Bank,  and  the  Henry  L.  Doherty  Company  in  New  York. 
Some  of  these  are  only  beginning  to  train  other  than  clerical 
workers. 

An  increasing  number  of  young  college  women,  especially 
in  the  west,  are  equipping  themselves  for  business  not 
through  "secretarial  courses"  but  through  university  schools 
of  commerce  and  business.  A  group  of  such  young  women 
came  to  Washington  during  the  war  in  the  wake  of  their 
professors  who  were  acting  as  experts  in  various  capacities 
for  the  government.  They  collected  and  organized  infor- 
mation with  regard  to  the  world's  supply  of  raw  and  manu- 
factured products,  their  distribution  and  control.  They 
constructed  price  tables;  they  made  shipping  and  tonnage 
charts;  they  became  familiar  with  market  fluctuations  for 
each  commodity.  They  grew  to  be  authorities  on  wool  and 
leather  and  sugar  and  wheat.  And  they  did  their  work 
largely  under  men  who  were  leading  business  men  in  these 
several  fields,  and  who  thus  became  aware  of  college 
women  as  a  new  professional  labor  supply. 

The  professional  schools  of  commerce  and  business  pre- 
pare for  a  wide  range  of  commercial  occupations,  offering 
such  courses  as  business  organization  and  administration, 
office  organization  and  procedure,  business  statistics,  ac- 
countancy, foreign  trade  and  shipping,  economic  and  in- 
dustrial history,  economic  geography,  transportation,  bank- 
ing and  finance,  public  utiHties,  insurance,  advertising  and 
trade  journalism,  employment  management,  marketing,  and 
business  psychology.  The  Harvard  School  maintains  a 
Bureau  of  Business  Research,  and  has  made  intensive 
studies  of  the  wholesale  and  retail  shoe  and  grocery  busi- 
nesses. These  schools  recommend  as  pre-professional 
undergraduate  courses  elementary  economics  and  finance, 
history,  modern  languages  including  Spanish,  physiography, 
chemistry  and  physics,  mathematics  through  calculus,  and 
a  knowledge  of  mechanical  drawing. 

There  is  no  one  way  of  securing  commercial  positions 
with  a  professional  future.  A  list  of  progressive  commer- 
cial organizations  with  modern  employment  and  training 
departments  and  systems  of  promotion  is  greatly  needed. 
Professional  schools  of  business  have  many  connections,  and 


I 


OFFICE  AND  MERCANTILE  SERVICES      243 

calls  for  their  students.  A  number  of  commercial  organi- 
zations write  directly  to  the  colleges  when  they  wish  be- 
ginners of  good  general  education;  and  others  make  use  of 
the  bureaus  of  occupations  for  trained  women  and  of  the 
better  type  of  business  agencies.  Many  advertise  in  appro- 
priate newspapers  or  trade  journals.  Direct  application  by 
letter  with  a  request  for  an  interview  still  has  advantages. 
This  method  is  less  hit-or-miss  now  that  so  many  firms 
are  installing  personnel  departments,  and  know  more  defi- 
nitely in  advance  the  workers  they  are  likely  to  need.  A 
perusal  of  the  "Help  Wanted"  columns  for  both  men  and 
women  in  such  a  commercial  advertising  medium  as  the 
New  York  Sunday  Times  reveals  the  different  opportunities 
of  the  sexes  and  also  furnishes  in  many  cases  what  are  in 
effect  "personnel  specifications"  prepared  by  various  firms. 
Nineteen  women  in  office  positions  filling  our  schedules 
reported  salaries  in  1918  and  1919  ranging  from  $1,020  to 
$2,700  with  a  median  salary  of  $1,500.  Seven  secretaries 
received  salaries  ranging  from  $1,020  to  $2,650  with  a 
median  salary  of  $1,300;  seven  office-managers  received 
salaries  ranging  from  $1,040  to  $1,820  with  a  median  salary 
of  $1,500;  two  other  managers  received  salaries  of  $1,060 
and  $1,600;  three  filing  supervisors  received  salaries  rang- 
ing from  $1,500  to  $2,700  with  a  median  salary  of  $2,650. 
Nine  of  these  women  are  college  graduates,  six  with  an 
additional  year  of  secretarial  training  at  Simmons  College ; 
four  have  had  partial  college  training,  legal  training,  or 
normal  training;  the  other  six  are  high-school  graduates. 
All  but  one  of  the  secretaries  are  college  graduates;  three 
of  the  seven  office  managers ;  none  of  the  filing  supervisors. 
The  median  length  of  service  for  the  college  group  is  four 
years ;  for  the  non-college  group,  thirteen  and  a  half  years. 
While  the  salary  figures  on  their  face  are  not  encouraging 
to  the  college  graduate  thinking  of  going  into  business,  since 
the  median  salary  of  the  college  group  is  only  $1,300;  of 
the  Simmons  group  only  $1,370;  of  the  miscellaneous  group 
$1,550;  and  of  the  non-college  group  $1,660,  they  are  based 
on  too  few  instances  to  warrant  general  conclusions,  and 
probably  mean  only  that  college  women  are  a  new  labor 
supply  in  the  commercial  world,  and  have  been  prone  to 


244       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

sidetrack  themselves  as  secretaries.^  During  the  war  many 
federal  departments  established  a  salary  scale  for  stenog- 
raphers of  from  $1,200  to  $1,400;  for  secretaries  of  from 
$1,500  to  $1,800,  with  higher  rates  for  "executive  assistants"  ; 
for  accounting  clerks  and  statistical  assistants  of  from 
$1,200  to  $1,800.  The  Bureau  of  Vocational  Information 
says  that  salaries  for  junior  accountants  range  from  $1,000 
to  $1,800;  for  senior  accountants  from  $2,000  to  $3,500  or 
more;  in  independent  practice,  fees  are  from  $10  to  $20  a 
day  for  juniors  and  at  least  $25  a  day  for  seniors.  -  No 
woman  performing  genuinely  secretarial  duties  should  ac- 
cept to-day  an  initial  salary  of  less  than  $1,500.  Secretaries 
of  experience  and  carrying  considerable  responsibility  are  re- 
ceiving salaries  up  to  $3,000  and  even  beyond.^  Exceptional 
women  in  managerial  positions  already  command  large  sal- 
aries, and  the  number,  range,  and  compensation  of  such 
positions  are  increasing.  It  only  remains  for  college  and 
professional  women  to  display  the  persistence,  intelligence, 
and  courage  needed  in  modern  commercial  work  and  thus 
to  prove  beyond  a  doubt  that  they  are  capable  of  being  more 
than  clerks  and  subordinates.  They  will  have  to  earn  pro- 
motion as  young  college  men  earn  it;  and  they  must  never 
forget  that  assumptions  of  belonging  to  a  superior  educa- 
tional or  social  group  are  serious  handicaps  to  commercial 
success,  as,  indeed,  they  are  coming  to  be  everywhere.  Edu- 
cation tells,  not  where  a  person  begins,  but  where  that  per- 
son comes  out. 

^  Non-commercial  office  workers  report  as  follows :  Secretaries 
to  college  executives  or  departments,  $728  to  $1,200  with  a  median 
salary  of  $1,000;  secretaries  to  executives  of  large  social  organiza- 
tions, $1,560  and  $1,800;  secretaries  with  executive  responsibilities 
in  educational  and  social  organizations,  $1,500  to  $2,000  with  a 
median  salary  of  $1,800;  secretary  of  a  hospital  X-ray  department, 
$1,140;  secretaries  to  philanthropic  women,  $1,140  and  $3,000;  sec- 
retary to  a  municipal  board,  $1,500. 

*  Vocations  for  Business  and  Professional  Women  (1919). 

*  During  1920,  advertisements  in  the  New  York  Times  of  posi- 
tions to  be  filled  by  commercial  employment  agencies  show  salaries 
for  experienced  women  office  workers  ranging  from  $25  to  $40  a 
week._  A  report  on  salaries  of  women  office  workers  in  New  York 
City  issued  in  1920  by  the  Merchants'  Association  gives  a  range  of 
from  $25  to  $70  a  week. 


OFFICE  AND  MERCANTILE  SERVICES     245 

Some  of  our  schedules  show  the  overlapping  duties  of 
women  in  office  positions,  and  make  shrewd  comments  on 
the  prospects  in  this  field.  A  young  Simmons  graduate 
who  is  secretary  to  the  treasurer  of  two  large  corporations 
says:  "I  keep  private  accounts,  do  shorthand,  typewriting, 
and  filing,  plot  cost  charts  and  statistics,  make  reports  of 
stock  markets,  meet  people,  see  all  cotton  brokers,  read  all 
reports  or  articles,  such  as  war-taxes,  Babson's  financial  re- 
ports, Comimerce  and  Finance;  in  short,  do  everything  to 
save  the  time  of  my  employer.  .  .  My  salary  is  raised 
automatically  a  hundred  dollars  a  year.  ...  If  possible 
after  graduating  from  college,  I  would  advise  a  girl  to 
spend  another  year  at  some  college  to  get  a  master's  degree. 
This  I  am  trying  to  do  now,  having  gone  to  ...  .  University 
in  the  evening  last  year,  and  I  expect  to  study  at  Columbia 
this  summer." 

Another  young  woman,  a  graduate  of  Radcliffe  and  Sim- 
mons, is  secretary  and  assistant  to  the  salesmanager  of  the 
hospital  sales  department  of  a  firm  manufacturing  surgical 
dressings.  She  says:  "I  organize  the  work  of  the  depart- 
ment, answer  correspondence,  check  and  solicit  sales,  adjust 
claims  and  complaints."  She  seems  to  be  an  assistant 
manager  rather  than  a  secretary,  since  she  carries  consid- 
erable independent  responsibility. 

A  graduate  of  Vassar  and  Simmons  is  secretary  in  the 
industrial  bureau  of  a  great  merchants'  association.  She 
says :  "I  dictate  answers  to  part  of  the  correspondence,  an- 
swer industrial  inquiries,  inaugurate  files  of  all  sorts,  work 
up  statistics,  and  in  general  act  as  assistant  to  the  manager, 
who  is  the  only  one  above  me.  ...  I  should  advise  women 
not  to  enter  as  stenographers  but  as  secretaries.  ...  If  I 
were  to  do  the  thing  over,  I  should  omit  shorthand  and  type- 
writing. I  think  a  college  education  will  get  you  ahead 
faster  without  it.  This  position  cannot  be  considered  as 
anything  but  a  school  for  an  ambitious  woman  because 
there  is  no  future  requiring  more  than  ortlinarily  good  rou- 
tine thought.  College  women  who  fancy  they  are  going 
to  be  satisfied  helping  some  wonderful  professor  or  benefi- 
cent social  worker  will  soon  realize  that  they  are  too  big 
for  this  sort  of  thing,  that  they  need  an  outlet  for  their 


246       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

own  ability  rather  than  a  place  in  which  they  serve  to 
develop  the  ability  of  others." 

A  Simmons  woman  who  is  private  secretary  to  a  lawyer 
and  who  was  previously  an  assistant  registrar  in  a  college 
and  with  a  well-known  law  firm  says :  "I  do  shorthand, 
typewriting,  bookkeeping,  and  keeping  of  records.  I  attend 
to  all  details  of  investments,  prepare  income  tax  reports,  and 
keep  trustees'  accounts.  I  meet  and  dispose  of  callers.  .  .  . 
I  have  found  it  desirable  to  perfect  my  knowledge  of  French 
and  to  familiarize  myself  with  certain  laws,  especially  those 
relating  to  taxation.  Practically  all  my  secretarial  train- 
ing has  been  useful.  .  .  .  Shorthand  and  typewriting  were 
indispensable.  For  my  position  a  college  education  and  ex- 
perience in  a  law  office  are  required."  In  seven  years  her 
salary  has  been  increased  from  $1,500  to  $2,650. 

A  Wellesley  and  Simmons  woman  is  office-manager  in  a 
law  firm.  She  says :  "I  keep  a  set  of  corporation  books ;  I 
have  general  oversight  of'suppHes,  repairs,  equipment,  rec- 
ords, etc.  I  distribute  work  for  the  office,  see  applicants, 
answer  inquiries,  and  have  general  supervision.  The  policy 
of  my  employers  is  to  employ  women  at  current  rates  in  all 
positions  where  the  profit  to  the  firm  is  as  great  as  it  would 
be  were  a  man  employed.  In  my  secretarial  training,  busi- 
ness administration  and  office  appliances  might  well  have 
received  more  emphasis." 

A  chief  clerk  or  office  manager  with  a  firm  dealing  in 
paper  makers'  supplies  and  maintaining  a  bureau  of  in- 
vestigation and  statistics  for  certain  branches  of  paper 
manufacture,  is  responsible  to  the  general  manager.  She 
says:  "I  have  general  charge  of  all  correspondence  and 
supervision  of  routine.  I  am  responsible  for  securing  all 
clerks  and  conducting  their  work.  I  carry  out  all  the  office 
policies  under  the  instructions  of  the  management.  .  .  .  My 
advice  to  other  women  is  to  perform  faithfully  and  intel- 
ligently the  work  required  of  you  and  to  strive  to  outgrow 
what  you  see  in  store  for  you  in  the  way  of  advancement, 
so  that  in  facing  the  possibility  of  reaching  your  limit  in 
an  organization,  you  will  be  ready  for  new  fields."  She  is 
not  a  college  woman,  and  after  ten  years  with  the  firm 
receives  a  salary  of  $1,820. 


OFFICE  AND  MERCANTILE  SERVICES     247 

Another  woman  is  assistant  to  the  manager  of  the  truck 
tire  department  in  the  branch  office  of  a.  great  rubber  com- 
pany. She  says:  "I  have  charge  of  the  correspondence, 
supervision  of  stock,  service  station,  and  all  matters  per- 
taining to  the  department.  I  am  in  charge  during  the 
manager's  absence.  Women  are  not  employed  in  this  de- 
partment in  any  other  of  the  company's  branches."  She 
is  not  a  college  graduate,  but  has  taken  some  college  courses 
while  employed. 

A  woman  for  many  years  employed  by  a  firm  of  patent 
attorneys  has  charge  of  the  details  of  foreign  patent  work, 
trade-mark  registration,  bookkeeping,  and  record  work. 
She  has  taken  a  law  course  at  an  evening  school  of  law. 
She  says :  "Except  that  it  is  preferable  to  have  men  attor- 
neys to  meet  men  clients,  I  think  employers  are  indifferent 
as  to  whether  men  or  women  make  up  their  office  force." 

The  attitude  of  the  younger  professional  women  in  busi- 
ness is  shown  by  a  file  systematizer  in  the  experimental  sta- 
tion of  a  great  chemical  and  explosives  company  who  says : 
'T  study  the  business,  perfect  a  filing  system,  install  it, 
train  clerks,  and  so  on.  .  .  .  My  advice  is,  don't  build  too 
small.  There  is  plenty  of  room  for  intelligence  and  initia- 
tive. Study  business  organization.  I  have  found  chemistry, 
economics,  finance,  and  accounting  most  useful  in  my  work- 
ing experience.  My  employers  are  glad  to  pay  traveling 
expenses  when  I  wish  to  visit  other  filing  departments, 
which  I  have  done  extensively."  This  young  woman  has 
had  numerous  college  courses  and  two  years'  study  in  a 
university  school  of  business  as  well  as  a  course  at  a  school 
of  filing.    She  receives  a  salary  of  $2,600  a  year. 

A  young  woman  of  twenty-four  with  some  normal  school 
training  and  previous  experience  as  a  telegraph  clerk  and 
life  insurance  agent  is  chief  file  clerk  in  a  western  oil  pipe 
line  company.  She  files  correspondence,  sorts  mail,  directs 
messenger  force,  and  answers  inquiries,  receiving  a  salary 
of  $1,500. 


In  the  mercantile  branch  of  commercial  service,  profes- 
sional women,  as  has  been  said,  occupy  a  much  more  im- 


248       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

portant  place  in  retail  than  in  wholesale  trade,  and  have 
devoted  themselves  to  study  of  the  problems  of  retail  sell- 
ing in  the  department  store  and  almost  not  at  all  to  the 
problems  of  outside  selling,  except  so  far  as  they  are  dealt 
with  through  advertising,  discussed  in  Chapter  XV.  The 
interest  of  educated  women  in  department  store  work  and 
their  systematic  training  for  it  have  been  due  until  very 
recently  almost  entirely  to  the  pioneer  school  of  retail  sales- 
manship in  Boston,  conducted  since  1905  under  the  direction 
of  Mrs.  Lucinda  W.  Prince  and  under  the  joint  auspices 
of  the  Women's  Educational  and  Industrial  Union  and 
Simmons  College.^  In  1918  it  became  the  Prince  School 
of  Education  for  Store  Service,  affiliated  with  these  educa- 
tional agencies,  with  eighteen  Boston  department  stores  and 
specialty  shops,  and  with  the  National  Retail  Drygoods  As- 
sociation. Originally  a  training  class  for  retail  saleswomen 
(which  still  continues),  the  school  soon  devoted  its  main 
efforts  to  providing  a  year's  course  of  training  for  educated 
women  to  fit  them  for  positions  as  "educational  directors" 
in  department  stores,  teaching  the  principles  and  practice  of 
retail  selling  to  the  force  behind  the  counters,  or  as  teachers 
of  retail  salesmanship  in  public  school  vocational  classes. 
The  preparation  of  these  teachers  has  from  the  first  involved 
frequent  observation  and  actual  "shop  practice"  as  sales- 
women in  certain  cooperating  department  stores  in  Boston. 
It  has  been,  in  fact,  a  conspicuous  demonstration  of  the 
practicability  of  cooperation  between  a  professional  school 
and  commercial  establishments,  and  the  first  undertaking 
of  the  sort  organized  exclusively  for  women.  The  Prince 
School  is  now  enlarging  the  scope  of  its  work  to  include 
the  training  of  "other  executives  in  charge  of  personnel 
work  in  stores."  Over  a  hundred  of  its  graduates  are  edu- 
cational directors  in  department  stores  throughout  the  coun- 
try, teachers  of  salesmanship  in  public  school  systems,  ex- 

*  See  Helen  R.  Norton.  Department  Store  Education.  Bulletin 
U.  S.  Bureau  of  Education,  No.  9  (1917).  A  Text-Book  on  Retail 
Selling  (1919).  Lucinda  W.  Prince.  Retail  Selling.  Bulletin  No. 
22.  Federal  Board  for  Vocational  Education  (1918).  Positions  of 
Responsibility  in  Department  Store  Organisations.  Bulletin  No.  5. 
Bureau  of  Vocational  Information  (1921).  Beulah  E.  Kennard. 
The  Educational  Director  (1918). 


OFFICE  AND  MERCANTILE  SERVICES     249 

perts  in  government  service,  managers  in  commercial  and 
industrial  establishments. 

A  more  recent  undertaking  is  the  Research  Bureau  for 
Retail  Training  of  the  Carnegie  Institute  of  Technology  in 
Pittsburgh,  established  in  1918  "to  increase  the  professional 
spirit  in  retailing."  This  Bureau  is  part  of  the  Division  of 
Applied  Psychology,  which  also  'includes  the  Bureau  of 
Salesmanship  Research,  established  in  1916  and  devoted  to 
the  problenis  of  wholesale  or  "outside"  selling.  The' Bureau 
of  Retail  Research  is  backed  by  seven  Pittsburgh  depart- 
ment stores,  and  works  in  cooperation  with  them  and  with 
the  public  school  system.  It  not  only  trains  professional 
workers  for  the  employment  and  training  departments  of 
retail  stores  and  teachers  of  salesmanship  for  the  public 
schools,  but  also  carries  on  research  in  the  problems  of 
retail  selling.  It  enrolls  a  limited  number  of  picked  men 
and  women,  and  is  on  a  graduate  basis.  In  1919-1920  it 
offered  eight  fellowships  of  $500.  In  1919  New  York 
University  also  opened  a  Training  School  for  Teachers  of 
Retail  Selling  with  a  two-year  course  on  a  graduate  basis 
and  with  the  cooperation  of  twenty  department  stores  in 
New  York  City. 

Another  organization  in  the  retail  field  is  the  Retail  Re- 
search Association  formed  in  191 7  by  eighteen  department 
stores  throughout  the  country,  to  which  have  lately  been 
added  Harrod's  in  London  and  the  Galerie  Lafayette  in 
Paris.  It  maintains  ofifices  in  both  these  cities  and  a  central 
office  in  New  York,  which  comprises  a  merchandise  divi- 
sion operating  a  cooperative  merchandising  or  buying  cor- 
poration and  an  organization  division  including  a  planning 
department  and  research  and  information  services,  at  the 
disposal  of  the  member  stores.  It  makes  the  experience  of 
each  available  to  the  others;  conducts  upon  request  special 
studies  of  individual  stores  or  departments ;  studies  general 
problems  of  organization  and  operation  ;  and  functions  to 
some  extent  as  an  employment  clearing-house  and  a  training 
center. 

The  National  Retail  Dry-goods  Association  is  in  cordial 
sympathy  with  these  various  efforts  to  develop  professional 
training  and  standards  in  the  dr>'goods  field.     Experiments 


250       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

and  progress  are  reported  in  the  influential  trade  journal 
Women  s  Wear.  Positions  in  department  stores  may  be 
best  secured  through  advertisement  in  this  journal;  through 
direct  application  to  the  employment  departments  of  the 
various  stores ;  or,  in  the  case  of  exceptionally  well  qualified 
persons,  through  the  Retail  Research  Association,  which 
sometimes  advertises  for  executive  workers  for  its  members 
in  the  New  York  daily  papers. 

The  variety  of  responsible  positions  held  by  women  in 
department  stores  is  indicated  by  three  employers'  schedules 
returned  by  large  stores  in  New  England,  the  Middle  West, 
and  on  the  Pacific  Coast.  One  says:  "Almost  every  type  of 
executive  position  in  the  store  is  or  has  been  held  by  a 
woman.  We  have  172  men  executives;  165  women  execu- 
tives. We  have  various  training  methods,  including  a  spe- 
cial training  group  for  quick  development  of  potential  ex- 
ecutives. There  are  many  executive  positions  with  us 
where  we  consider  women  more  efficient  than  men  and 
vice  versa.  We  have  found  that  our  women  executives 
average  practically  as  high  as  the  men  in  permanency  of 
employment.  Among  non-executives,  we  find  that  women 
are  not  as  permanent  as  men,  due  mostly  to  their  being  in 
business  for  a  livelihood  until  such  time  as  they  marry.  .  .  . 
Undeniably  a  college  woman  is  much  more  valuable  as  a 
result  of  her  advanced  education,  but  we  have  found  that 
if  an  individual  is  of  the  right  type,  she  will  succeed,  even 
with  the  handicap  of  lack  of  higher  education.  The  war 
has  undeniably  given  many  women  a  chance  to  prove  con- 
clusively that  they  are  capable  of  bigger  things  than  have 
commonly  been  entrusted  to  them  in  the  past.  Women  are 
undoubtedly  in  industry  to  stay." 

Another  says :  "We  have  a  woman  assistant  superinten- 
dent, assistants  to  other  executives,  an  educational  director. 
a  welfare  director,  a  service  director,  buyers,  and  assistants. 
We  employ  men  and  women  in  about  the  same  numbers 
except  in  the  five  or  six  most  important  executive  positions. 
We  find  that  the  efficiency  varies  with  the  individual,  not 
the  sex,  except  in  the  five  or  six  most  important  positions, 
which  are  better  filled  by  men.  Both  turnover  and  length 
of  employment  are  approximately  the  same  in  both  sexes. 


OFFICE  AND  MERCANTILE  SERVICES     251 

Comparison  between  college  and  non-college  women  is  diffi- 
cult because  of  the  small  number  of  college  women  used. 
We  think  the  percentage  of  success  and  failure  about  the 
same  as  among  less  educated  women." 

Another  says :  "We  have  a  woman  advertising  manager, 
a  woman  welfare  director,  and  a  woman  training  director, 
as  well  as  women  buyers  and  assistant  buyers,  floor  man- 
agers, employment,  stock,  and  office  workers.  The  relative 
efficiency  of  men  and  women  varies  with  the  nature  of  the 
work.  Men  are  physically  better  for  certain  classes  of 
work,  women,  in  general,  are  more  efficient  in  detail  work. 
We  find  that  college  women  usually  lack  the  practical  ex- 
perience which  the  non-college  women  of  their  age  have 
had." 

Women  in  department  stores  filling  our  schedules  include 
four  educational  directors  in  establishments  in  New  Eng- 
land, Pennsylvania,  and  the  Middle  West ;  a  buyer  of  coats 
and  suits,  a  restaurant  manager,  a  department  head  with  a 
hundred  people  under  her,  in  metropolitan  eastern  cities ; 
and  three  recreation  and  welfare  workers  not  connected 
with  organized  personnel  departments.  Returns  from  four 
women  in  department  store  personnel  work  have  been  given 
in  Chapter  XL  The  educational  directors'  salaries  ranged  in 
1918  from  $1,560  to  $2,500  with  a  median  salary  of  $2,000; 
the  buyer  received  $4,500,  having  begun  in  1914  as  a  sales- 
woman at  ten  dollars  a  week;  the  restaurant  manager  re- 
ceived $3,120;  the  department  head,  $10,000;  the  recreation 
and  "welfare  workers  from  $1,040  for  a  beginner  just  out 
of  college  to  $2,400.  ^  Of  the  educational  directors,  three  are 
college  graduates,  and  one  is  a  normal  school  graduate  with 
college  courses.  All  have  had  previous  teaching  experience 
ranging  from  one  year  to  twelve  years.  Three  are  gradu- 
ates of  the  Boston  School  of  Salesmanship,  novv^  the  Prince 
School;  one  has  had  courses  in  salesmanship  in  two  uni- 
versity schools  of  business  administration.  The  buyer  was 
educated  in  a  well-known  private  school.  The  restaurant 
manager  taught  for  nine  years  before  going  into  her  present 

*  For  more  recent  salaries,  see  Positions  of  Responsibility  in  De- 
partment Store  Organizations.  Bulletin  No.  5.  Bureau  of  Voca- 
tional Information   (1921). 


252        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

occupation.  The  department  manager  is  a  college  gradu- 
ate, who  reached  her  present  position  through  service  as 
advertising  writer  and  foreign  buyer  for  the  firm.  She  is 
one  of  the  most  successful  women  executives  in  the  mer- 
cantile world.  Of  the  three  welfare  workers,  one  is  coun- 
selor of  an  employees'  association,  and  is  a  married  woman 
with  considerable  experience  in  social  and  recreation  work 
with  young  people.  She  visits  sick  employees,  organizes 
social  activities,  and  does  general  welfare  work  throughout 
the  store.  The  other  two  are  young  college  graduates. 
One  of  them  at  the  age  of  twenty-four  has  the  title  of 
"store  matron."  The  other  has  charge  of  clubs  for  em- 
ployees, dramatics,  gymnastics,  and  dancing.  She  has  done 
some  social  case  work  and  has  also  been  an  actress.  These 
young  women  are  in  the  department  of  training,  which  is 
in  charge  of  a  man.  They  are  responsible  to  the  manage- 
ment and  not  at  all  to  the  employees. 

Some  of  the  comments  are  as  follows :  "I  consider  the 
policies  and  organization  of  my  employer  the  most  striking 
example  that  I  know  of  industrial  democracy." 

"Make  yourself  efficient,  and  no  employer  can  long  go 
without  recognizing  your  ability.  This  is  shown  time  and 
time  again  in  store  work." 

"Preserve  a  humble  attitude  at  first,  as  the  number  of 
unthinkable  things  one  may  do  wrong  in  a  department  store 
is  very  large.    The  red  tape  is  terrible." 

"To  do  practical  store  work,  gain  the  point  of  view  of 
the  salesperson." 

"Common  sense,  imagination,  and  a  psychological  study 
of  the  buying  public  are  the  keynotes.  As  a  buyer,  dress 
well,  be  neat,  have  a  sense  of  humor,  fall  back  on  plain 
common  sense  when  in  doubt,  mind  your  own  business,  and 
never  be  tired." 


Closely  allied  to  the  department  store  but  with  distinctive 
organization  and  problems  are  the  great  mail-order  houses ; 
and  in  them,  too,  are  openings  for  professional  women, 
either  already  existing  or  to  be  won  through  intelligence  and 
determination.     The  growing  number  of  chain-store   sys- 


OFFICE  AND  MERCANTILE  SERVICES     253 

terns  affords  another  opportunity.  Both  these  types  of  dis- 
tribution provide  excellent  business  training  for  socially- 
minded  women  who  wish  to  prepare  themselves  for  posi- 
tions as  managers,  buyers,  or  other  executives  in  true  co- 
operative societies. 

Mail-order  houses  and  chain-store  systems  also  form  a 
connecting  link  between  "inside"  and  "outside"  selling. 
Wholesale  salesmanship  and  salesmanagement  is  a  field  into 
which  few  professional  women  have  ventured,  but  which 
lies  just  before  them.  A  study  of  the  "Help  Wanted"  col- 
umns of  any  metropolitan  daily  shows  that  "saleswomen" 
means  women  behind  the  counter ;  "salesmen"  means  in  the 
large  majority  of  cases  men  "on  the  road."  A  well-known 
firm  engaged  in  the  manufacture  and  distribution  of  watches 
is  at  present  trying  out  a  group  of  young  college  women  as 
salesmanagers  in  experimental  territory.  They  do  not  have 
any  women  regularly  on  the  road,  but  have  sent  some  out 
for  periods  of  from  two  weeks  to  two  months  to  get  sales 
experience  for  their  experimental  branch  work.  With 
salesmanship  and  salesmanagement  calling  for  a  high  type 
of  worker  and  with  opportunities  for  professional  training 
offered  by  the  university  schools  of  business  and  by  such 
organizations  as  the  Carnegie  Institute  Bureau  of  Sales- 
manship Research,  they  offer  a  practical  challenge  to  the 
woman  who  likes  to  prove  her  capacity  in  new  lines  of 
work.^ 

Women  in  business  for  themselves  are  not  considered  in 
this  volume,  since  individual  cases  vary  so  greatly.  But 
women  in  growing  numbers  are  successfully  managing  busi- 
nesses of  their  own  of  many  sorts.  In  addition  to  the 
requisite  amount  of  capital,  they  need  the  same  knowledge 
of  business  organization  and  administration,  the  same  pro- 
fessional attitude  toward  its  problems  that  are  needed  by 
the  professional  business  woman  on  a  salary. 

^  See  Eleanor  Gilbert.  The  Ambitions  Woman  in  Business  (1916), 
Chapter  14. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

COMMERCIAL  SERVICES:   BANKING,  INSURANCE,   PUBLIC  UTIL- 
ITIES, REAL  ESTATE 

Banking,  insurance,  public  utilities,  and  real  estate  are 
specialized  commercial  services  devised  to  facilitate  the 
exchange,  accumulation,  and  protection  of  property  and  the 
extension  of  credit.  They  are  all  concerned  primarily  with 
matters  of  finance  and  with  the  selling  of  special  types  of 
service.  Although  they  are  still  for  the  most  part  under 
private  corporation  management,  their  public  character  and 
importance  are  indicated  by  the  growing  body  of  legislation 
for  their  control ;  and  the  first  two,  as  well  as  the  third, 
might  well  be  called  "public  utilities."  This  is  as  yet  far 
less  true  of  real  estate,  perhaps  because  land  and  buildings 
are  thought  of  as  tangible  commodities,  to  be  bought  and 
sold  individually  like  other  commodities,  and  not  as  forms 
of  common  service.  But  since  the  war,  there  are  signs  that 
the  public  utility  idea  is  extending  to  housing  and  to  natural 
resources ;  and  real  property  plays  a  large  part  in  the  trans- 
actions of  the  other  three  services.  Many  savings  banks 
and  investment  companies  deal  largely  in  mortgages. 

Banking,  in  which  we  are  including  the  selling  of  bonds 
and  other  investment  securities  and  also  stock-broking,  is  a 
practically  new  occupation  for  women  workers  other  than 
clerical.  It  has  attracted  of  late  somewhat  more  attention 
than  it  merits,  since  its  opportunities  for  professional  women 
to  advance  beyond  a  limited  point  are  still  problematical. 
But  during  the  war  many  women  replaced  men  in  banks,  and 
other  women  achieved  success  in  selling  "Liberty  Bonds," 
so  that  bank  ofiiicials  have  become  aware  of  women  as  a 
labor  supply,  and  are  even  encouraging  them  along  certain 
lines.  Before  the  war,  one  or  two  of  the  great  metropolitan 
banks  had  begun  to  approach  the  women's  colleges  for  a 

254 


SPECIAL  COMMERCIAL  SERVICES         255 

small  group  of  picked  apprentices  in  the  same  way,  although 
not  to  the  same  extent,  that  they  were  approaching  the  men's 
colleges.  Since  the  war,  they  are  employing  young  women 
just  out  of  college  in  considerably  larger  numbers.  Some 
of  them  are  giving  women  definite  training,  and  are  "routing 
them  through"  the  departments  in  order  to  initiate  them  into 
banking  organization  and  processes.  But  there  is  a  ten- 
dency to  differentiate  their  training  from  that  of  young 
men  of  the  same  educational  groups  through  giving  them 
courses  in  stenography  and  typewriting.  They  are  still 
looked  upon  largely  as  a  supplementary  labor  supply  to  be 
prepared  for  the  more  recently  developed  and  adjunct 
services  in  modern  banking — librarianship,  filing,  personnel 
or  "service"  work,  editorial  work,  statistical  and  other  "re- 
search" work — rather  than  as  part  of  the  general  supply  of 
potential  executive  material.  There  is  still  a  widespread 
feeling  that  they  cannot  deal  directly  with  customers,  al- 
though a  number  of  exceptions  have  been  made  of  late. 

The  position  of  professional  women  in  banking  has,  how- 
ever, reached  the  stage  where  it  is  likely  to  develop  rapidly, 
and  where  the  nature  of  that  development  will  depend 
largely  upon  the  attitude  of  women  themselves.  They  need 
to  realize  clearly  that  modern  banking  is  a  highly  technical 
profession,  still  preponderatingly  a  man's  occupation ;  to 
understand  the  possible  lines  of  promotion  and  to  expect 
it  when,  but  only  when,  they  have  fully  demonstrated 
capaicity.  They  need  to  cultivate  a  professional  group 
spirit  and  to  formulate  professional  standards  and  poHcies. 
For  the  present,  they  would  probably  do  well  to  form  asso- 
ciations or  clubs  of  women  professional  bank  workers  as 
well  as  to  join  men's  banking  organizations  to  which  they 
are  eligible. 

The  past  few  years  have  seen  a  remarkable  development 
of  the  scope  and  methods  of  banking  in  the  United  States. 
The  Federal  Reserve  system,  which  did  not  become  opera- 
tive until  late  in  1914,  provides  for  the  first  time  a  country- 
wide banking  system  through  its  twelve  regional  banks, 
with  both  large  and  small  member  banks  sharing  in  man- 
agement. It  ties  the  two  hundred  and  thirty-three  clear- 
ing-houses into  something  like  a  national  clearance  system', 


256        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

both  facilitates  and  stabilizes  credits ;  and  furnishes  a  finan- 
cial machinery  comparable  to  that  of  foreign  countries, 
through  which  may  be  carried  on  our  greatly  extended  share 
in  international  finance  and  international  trade.  The  adop- 
tion of  "trade  acceptances"  also  fosters  commercial  dealings 
with  other  countries.  The  new  generation  of  professional 
workers  in  banking  will  be  required  to  have  an  active  knowl- 
edge of  world  trade  resources,  world  banking  systems  and 
practices,  and  modern  banking  methods,  that  were  unknown 
except  to  a  few  far-sighted  leaders  before  the  war.  A  pro- 
fession long  held  to  be  conspicuously  conservative  is  be- 
coming almost  a  profession  in  the  making. 

A  lecturer  to  classes  of  bank  workers  conducted  by  the 
American  Institute  of  Banking  says :  "Every  young  man 
who  goes  into  a  bank  .  .  .  should  make  up  his  mind  very 
early  that  the  work  is  not  easy  and  the  only  way  he  may 
succeed  is  to  begin  a  systematic  study  of  banking  as  a 
science.  ,  .  .  Banking  is  a  profession  based  upon  scientific 
data.  The  physician  cannot  hope  to  learn  medicine  through 
experience  and  experiment  upon  his  own  body.  .  .  .  Many 
bankers,  and  especially  the  younger  and  inexperienced,  de- 
ceive themselves  with  the  idea  that  they  can  learn  all  they 
need  to  know  by  close  application  to  their  own  immediate 
desks,  counters,  and  communities.  Just  as  the  science  of 
surgery  and  medicine  is  based  upon  the  natural  laws  of  the 
human  body,  so  the  science  of  banking  grows  out  of  eco- 
nomic laws  that  are  at  the  basis  of  all  business  activity.  .  .  . 
'A  successful  banker  is  composed  of  about  one-fifth  ac- 
countant, two-fifths  lawyer,  three-fifths  political  economist, 
and  four-fifths  gentleman  and  scholar — total  ten-fifths — 
double-size.  Any  smaller  person  may  be  a  pawnbroker  or 
a  promoter,  but  not  a  banker.'  "  ^ 

A  high  official  of  the  National  City  Bank  of  New  York 
said  in  an  address  to  Yale  seniors  on  the  topic  of  foreign 
banking:  "If  you  have  decided  to  go  into  the  banking  fiekl, 
then,  no  matter  what  bank  you  may  start  in  or  what  posi- 
tion you  may  hold,  plan  your  reading  and  your  studies  along 
lines  that  will  make  you  a  broader  American.  Study  com- 
modity banking  and  foreign  exchange.  Go  to  the  bottom 
*C.  H.  Wolfe.     Elementary  Banking  (1915). 


SPECIAL  COMMERCIAL  SERVICES         257 

of  every  foreign  transaction  that  comes  under  your  notice, 
and,  of  most  importance,  keep  eternally  at  foreign  lan- 
guages. A  speaking  knowledge  of  commercial  Spanish 
French,  and  Russian  will  prove  of  greatest  value  to  you  in 
after  life.  If  you  have  the  language  equipment  and  the 
practical  knowledge  of  banking  obtained  even  in  a  country 
bank,  it  will  not  be  long  before  you  will  find  your  oppor- 
tunity. And  right  here,  let  me  say  that  there  is  no  better 
training  school  for  foreign  banking  than  the  all-round  ex- 
perience which  a  man  can  obtain  in  a  country  bank."  ^ 

The  National  City  Bank  has  for  some  years  provided 
definite  courses  training  young  college  men  as  managers  of 
branch  banks  in  foreign  countries ;  but  has  not  yet  extended 
these  opportunities  to  college  women.  The  financial  institu- 
tions in  this  country  in  which  women  may  be  employed 
group  themselves  as  commercial  or  general  banks,  national 
and  state  ;  savings  banks  ;  trust  companies  ;  so-called  private 
banks,  which  commonly  do  an  investment  business  in  bonds 
and  staple  stocks;  and  brokerage  firms,  buying  and  selling 
stocks  and  bonds  on  commission  for  customers.  The  Dis- 
trict Federal  Reserve  Banks  and  the  District  Federal  Land 
Banks,  which  make  long-term  loans  to  farmers,  are  gov- 
ernment institutions.  Credit  unions,  or  people's  cooperative 
banks,  are  authorized  by  law  in  several  states,  and  are  grow- 
ing in  number.  Building  and  loan  associations  are,  in  effect, 
cooperative  banking  institutions. 

The  stock  in  trade  of  banks  is  surplus  money,  or  capital, 
of  which  they  are  the  depositaries,  and  which  they  lend  at 
a  fixed  rate,  part  of  which  goes  to  depositors  in  the  form 
of  interest,  part  to  stockholders,  and  part  as  a  charge  for 
service.  Commercial  banks  deal  only  in  what  is  called  cir- 
culating or  fluid  capital,  rented  out  as  it  were,  for  a  brief 
period  in  the  form  of  short-term  loans.  Savings  banks  and 
trust  companies  deal  in  certain  kinds  of  fixed  or  investment 
capital,  mortgages,  bonds,  and  other  amply  secured  and 
long-term  loans.  Banks  are  not  allowed  to  invest  deposi- 
tors' money  in  stocks,  since  these  are  purchased  shares  in 
a  business,  the  returns  from  which  fluctuate  according  to 

*W.  S.  Kies.  Opportunities  for  Young  Men  in  the  Foreign 
Field  (Pamphlet,  1916). 


258        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

earnings.  But  banks  frequently  give  advice  to  customers 
about  their  private  investments  in  bonds  and  stocks.  Some 
of  them  maintain  closely  related  investment  companies,  such 
as  the  National  City  Company  of  the  National  City  Bank. 
Some  investment  houses  deal  only  in  bonds,  and  are  known 
as  bond  houses.  Brokerage  houses  buy  and  sell  stocks  for 
customers  on  the  stock  exchange,  and  are  thus  connected 
with  the  speculative  market  as  well  as  with  the  investment 
market.  Before  the  war,  Americans  preferred  to  invest 
in  stocks  in  spite  of  their  greater  risk,  since  they  yield  a 
higher  rate  of  interest.  But  the  various  government  war 
loans  have  accustomed  them  to  the  idea  of  investing  in 
government  and  other  bonds.  With  world-wide  reconstruc- 
tion and  development,  there  is  likely  to  be  even  greater  ex- 
pansion in  the  buying  and  selling  of  the  bonds  of  govern- 
ments, cities,  public  utility  corporations,  and  the  like. 

The  groups  of  workers  essential  to  the  conduct  of  a  bank 
are  (i)  the  administrative  officers,  chosen  by  the  directors 
and  responsible  for  the  policies  and  general  financial  de- 
cisions of  the  bank — president,  vice-president,  and  cashier; 
(2)  the  tellers  who  actually  receive  and  pay  out  the  de- 
positors' money;  (3)  the  bookkeeping  and  clerical  staff 
who  attend  to  the  recording  and  balancing  of  all  financial 
transactions.  In  large  institutions,  these  groups  become 
major  divisions  with  many  departments.  In  the  executive 
division  will  be  such  departments  as  loans,  investments, 
credits,  auditing,  statistics,  foreign  exchange ;  in  the  tellers' 
division,  the  paying  tellers',  the  receiving  tellers',  the  note 
tellers',  the  collection,  and  the  transit  departments ;  in  the 
bookkeeping  division,  the  statem.ent  or  ledger  department, 
the  proof,  filing,  and  stenographic  departments.  Large 
modern  banks  are  maintaining  research  and  information  de- 
partments for  their  own  staffs  and  for  their  customers,  in 
which  are  to  be  found  bank  librarians,  financial  experts  of 
many  kinds,  editors,  and  statisticians.  Where  many  loans 
are  made,  the  credit  experts  who  investigate  the  borrower's 
financial  standing  and  the  character  of  his  securities  are  of 
the  highest  importance.  Where  the  bank's  funds  are  invested 
largely  in  bonds,  the  bond  expert  appears,  calling  in  the 
services  of  engineers,  lawyers,  and  others.     The  bond  de- 


SPECIAL  COMMERCIAL  SERVICES         259 

partment  of  a  great  Chicago  bank  advertises :  "In  making 
the  analysis  of  a  recent  proposition  for  a  bond  issue,  we 
employed  two  lawyers,  one  accountant,  two  engineers,  an 
expert  in  municipal  government,  a  tax  expert,  an  industrial 
organizer,  in  addition  to  our  experts  in  credit  and  banking." 
Where  there  is  a  foreign  department,  there  are  experts  in 
foreign  trade  and  foreign  securities.  There  are  also  experts 
in  "floating"  loans,  domestic  and  foreign.  Where  there  are 
hundreds  of  workers,  the  personnel  or  "service"  department 
may  be  thoroughly  organized;  and  there  may  be  a  definite 
education  or  training  in  service  department,  with  a  special 
instructional  staff. 

An  intensive  study  of  Women  in  Banking  in  the  City 
of  Minneapolis  was  made  between  July  and  October,  1918, 
by  the  Woman's  Occupational  Bureau  of  that  city.  Before 
the  war,  about  ninety  per  cent  of  the  bank  workers  in 
Minneapolis  were  men;  and  the  ten  per  cent  of  women 
were  nearly  all  routine  workers.  "Probably  not  more  than 
twenty  women  in  April,  191 7,  held  positions  of  responsi- 
bility, such  as  private  secretaries,  managers  or  assistant 
managers  of  departments,  and  tellers.  Fifteen  months 
later,  we  find  that  over  forty  per  cent  of  the  employees  are 
women,  more  than  eighty  of  whom  are  employed  as  private 
secretaries,  tellers,  managers  and  assistant  managers,  .  .  . 
an  increase  of  more  than  three  hundred  per  cent  in  voca- 
tional opportunity  for  women."  Women  taken  hurriedly 
into  banks  in  the  war  emergency  naturally  did  not  do  work 
equal  to  that  of  men  who  had  received  training  in  lower 
bank  positions,  and  for  the  most  part  they  received  lower 
salaries.  Moreover,  the  loss  of  experienced  men  clerks 
led  to  a  great  increase  in  the  use  of  adding  and  bookkeep- 
ing machines.  But  the  report  is  optimistic  about  the  pro- 
fessional future  for  women  in  Minneapolis  banks.  "The 
banks  are  retaining  women  as  part  of  their  permanent  work- 
ing force,  .  .  .  and  they  are  recognized  as  a  source  of 
supply  for  promotion  to  positions  of  responsibility  and 
salary.  .  .  .  Women  have  proved  their  value  as  bank  em- 
ployees, and  the  normal  expansion  of  business  is  absorbing 
a  larger  number  of  employees.  .  .  .  Tellers,  managers  and 
assistant   managers  of   departments   represent  so    far  the 


26o       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

ultimate  vocational  opportunity  of  women  in  banks.  ...  A 
college  graduate  of  twenty-four  who  on  August  first  was 
sorting  mail  ...  in  October  had  been  promoted  to  a  posi- 
tion as  teller.  ...  In  her  former  position  she  had  learned 
the  kind  of  work  done  in  every  department  of  the  bank,  the 
forms  for  listing  various  kinds  of  accounts,  the  listing, 
proving,  and  checking  of  items  and  the  handling  of  checks 
and  drafts — all  excellent  training  for  the  work  of  teller.  ,  .  . 
Aside  from  the  training  through  work  connected  with  a 
specific  job,  woman  employees  of  the  large  banks  partici- 
pate in  the  training  courses  offered  under  the  auspices  of 
the  American  Institute  of  Banking." 

Before  the  war,  professional  women  were  beginning  to 
be  employed  in  New  York  banks  as  file  supervisors,  libra- 
rians, statisticians,  employment  or  service  managers  for 
women  employees,  and  to  a  small  extent  as  managers  of 
departments  for  women  customers  and  as  bond  salesmen. 
At  first,  women  coming  into  contact  with  possible  customers 
were  chosen  largely  because  of  attractive  personality  and 
wide  social  acquaintance,  rather  than  because  of  any  special 
training  in  banking.  To-day,  they  are  being  increasingly 
selected  from  women  of  professional  equipment  and  proved 
capacity.  Within  a  year  three  New  York  City  trust  com- 
panies— one  of  them  perhaps  the  largest  in  the  world — 
have  elected  women  assistant  secretaries,  corresponding  to 
assistant  cashier  in  a  commercial  bank.  One  of  these,  a 
college  woman,  had  been  for  two  years  among  the  most 
successful  bond  salesmen  of  the  institution,  and  before 
that  had  been  connected  for  several  years  with  a  great  pub- 
lic utility  corporation.  Another  woman  is  assistant  secre- 
tary-treasurer of  a  trust  company  in  an  adjacent  town.  A 
woman  is  manager  of  a  southern  clearing  house.  The 
employment  of  women  trained  in  home  economics  as  budget 
advisers  in  banks  is  described  in  Chapter  VII. 

Bond  houses,  similar  departments  of  the  great  banks,  and 
general  investment  houses  buy  whole  issues  or  large  blocks 
of  bonds  and  guaranteed  stocks,  and  retail  them  to  in- 
vestors. The  National  City  Company  says :  "One  of  our 
functions  is  mercantile,  and  consists  of  distribution — get- 
ting investment  securities  from  the  interests  issuing  them 


SPECIAL  COMMERCIAL  SERVICES         261 

to  the  banks,  firms,  or  private  investors  who  wish  to  buy 
them.  Our  other  function  is  professional,  and  consists  of 
appraising  an  investor's  own  special  needs,  and  advising 
what  securities  will  best  meet  his  requirements  with  com- 
bined reference  to  maximum  yield  and  safety.  .  .  .  The 
National  City  Company,  like  the  great  factories  .  .  .  manu- 
factures a  commodity  for  national  distribution.  This  com- 
modity is  a  complete  service  for  you  as  an  investor — and 
this  requires  a  large  army  of  officers  and  producers  and 
large  areas  of  floor-space."  ^ 

The  two  main  departments  of  an  investment  house  are 
the  buying  department,  which  includes  both  actual  trading 
in  the  great  investment  markets  and  research  ;  and  the  office, 
and  field  selling  departments.  All  issues  of  bonds  or  stocks 
are  carefully  investigated  before  purchasing.  A  college 
woman  connected  with  a  New  York  investment  house 
writes  thus  of  the  buying  department:  "Picture  to 
yourself  a  group  of  scholarly  pessimists,  unwilling  to  be- 
lieve anything  without  documentary  proof  and  trusting  few 
besides  themselves  to  compile  the  documents,  always  analyz- 
ing, always  making  allowance  for  a  dark  future,  and  you 
have  the  buying  department.  Very  expert  and  very  few 
in  number  the  buyers  are.  Women  with  engineering  train- 
ing and  those  who  have  shown  originality  in  research  in 
chemistry,  geology,  economics,  or  law  might  fitly  apply  for 
work  in  this  department."  -  As  yet,  few  women  have  been 
employed  in  this  side  of  investment  work;  but  there  seems 
a  chance  here  for  the  group  with  a  war-derived  knowledge 
of  domestic  and  foreign  trade,  for  the  new  oil  and  gas 
geologists  (see  p.  337),  and  for  women  with  legal  train- 
ing.^ "The  statistical  department,  information  department, 
or  library,  as  it  is  variously  called,  is  another  branch  of 
the  buying  department.  Here  are  kept  not  only  books, 
but  financial  manuals,  periodicals,  reports  of  corporations, 
files  of  clippings,  circulars  of  other  houses,  and  whatever 

^Men  and  Bonds  (Pamphlet,  1920). 

'Elizabeth  F.  Cook.  Opportunities  for  Women  in  finance.  Jour- 
nal of  Association  of  Collegiate  Alumnc-e.    Volume  XI  (t9I7-i9i8\ 

*  See  Women  in  the  Law.  Bureau  of  Vocational  Information 
Bulletin  Three,  pp.  73-82. 


262        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

else  the  buying  or  sales  department  is  likely  to  need  for 
quick  reference.     Many  houses  use  the  statistical  depart- 
ment as  the  training  school  for  their  promising  young  men. 
Women,  too,  will  generally  find  it  the  best  door  by  which 
to  enter,  as  well  as  the  least  obstructed.     The  work  is  val- 
uable as  giving  a  comprehensive  view  of  the  business  along 
with  the  best  preparation   for  more  specialized  buying  or 
selling  work."  ^     The  National  City  Company  says :  "The 
research  department  ...  is  a  tireless  'lookout.'  .  .  .  Our 
public  utility  files  alone  contain  more  than  20,000  folders." 
On  the  side  of  selling  securities,  a  few  bond  houses,  nota- 
bly the   William  P.   Bonright   Company,   began   to   employ 
women  as  bond  salesmen  before  the  war.     Women  made 
excellent  records  as  salesmen  in  the  various  "Liberty"  and 
"Victory"  loan  "drives,"  particularly  in  the  hotel  and  shop- 
ping districts ;  and  their  position  in  this  type  of  financial 
work  seems  assured.     In  New  York  they  are  attached  to 
"up-town"  branches  of  banks  and  investment  houses,  as  well 
as  doing  outside  selling,  and  are  given  the  regular  train- 
ing of  securities  salesmen.     The  idea  at  first  was  that  they 
should  sell  particularly  to  women  customers;  but  some  of 
them  have  been  equally  successful  with  men.     In  fact,  many 
men  are  looking  for  an  investment  expert,  whether  man  or 
woman;  while  some  women  still  have  less  business  confi- 
dence   in    a    woman    than    in    a    man.      In    most    cases, 
salesmen  are  provided  with  a  drawing  account  up  to  a  cer- 
tain figure,  and  are  then  paid  a  commission  on  their  sales. 
A  few  firms,  however,  think  that  better  results  are  secured 
through  paying  a  salary  with  some  form  of  bonus  or  com- 
mission.    The  work  requires  the  ability  to  approach  and 
convince  people,  presence,  dignity,  objectivity,  sagacity,  and 
vigorous  health.     While  some  employers  and  some  women 
think  that  "feminine  charm"  may  be  capitalized  as  a  busi- 
ness asset,  in  the  long  run  such  an  attitude  probably  loses 
more  customers  than  it  secures.  Initial  earnings  in  securities 
selling  are  small;  but  success  or  failure  is  quickly  deter- 
mined, and  for  a  woman  who  succeeds,  the  income  may  be 
practically  what  she  determines  to  make  it.     Bond  and  se- 

^  Elizabeth  F.  Cook.    Opportunities  for  Women  in  Fiiiance.    Jour- 
nal of  A.  C.  A.,  Volume  XI. 


SPECIAL  COMMERCIAL  SERVICES         263 

curities  selling  is  a  valuable  training  for  more  important 
positions.  Few  women  other  than  clerical  have  been  em- 
ployed in  brokerage  firms ;  but  in  rare  cases,  women  have 
shown  exceptional  ability  as  traders  in  the  speculative 
market. 

A  good  background  for  professional  work  in  banks  and 
other  financial  institutions  is  given  through  college  courses 
in  economics,  banking  and  finance,  and  statistics.  The  uni- 
versity schools  of  commerce  and  business  administration 
provide  professional  training  through  both  regular  and 
extension  courses.  New  York  University  has  a  Wall 
Street  Branch  of  its  School  of  Commerce,  Accounts,  and 
Finance,  designed  for  those  employed  in  the  financial  dis- 
trict. A  number  of  great  banking  institutions  have  their 
own  education  departments.  Investment  houses,  such  as 
the  National  City  Company  and  the  Henry  L.  Doherty  Com- 
pany, conduct  bond  and  securities  schools  for  salesmen,  to 
which  women  have  been  admitted.  The  American  Institute 
of  Banking  has  about  23,000  students  in  its  various  chapters. 
In  1918-1919  women  were  admitted  as  associate  members. 
The  standard  course  is  three  years  in  length,  and  is  open 
to  men  and  women  employed  in  banks.  The  New  York 
City  Chapter  has  about  4,000  students,  of  whom  some  200 
are  women.  One  woman  was  graduated  in  1920,  complet- 
ing the  course  in  a  little  over  two  years.  The  National 
City  Bank,  which  has  worked  out  perhaps  the  most  compre- 
hensive scheme  of  training  in  service  for  men  says:  "An 
extra  effort  was  made  to  get  college  women — women  of 
broad  preliminary  training  and  possessing  great  possibilities 
for  success  in  positions  of  responsibility.  These  college 
graduates  were  immediately  put  to  work  learning  type- 
writing and  stenography.  They  also  studied  the  corre- 
spondence files  of  the  department  to  which  they  were  to  be 
sent.  In  a  comparatively  short  time  they  were  given  an 
outline  for  simple  letters  which  they  were  to  write.  When 
a  letter  came  from  a  correspondent  or  a  customer  with  ref- 
erence to  his  account,  the  entire  folder  of  that  correspon- 
dence was  turned  over  to  one  of  these  girls.  She  digested 
the  contents  and  wrote  the  reply.  By  selecting  girls  of  real 
ability  and  splendid  training,  and  entrusting  to  them  real  re- 


264        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

sponsibilities  (stenography  and  typewriting  was  merely  a 
stepping  stone),  the  bank  is  developing  women  who  are  not 
only  expert  letter  writers,  but  who  are  learning  to  assume 
many  responsibilities  heretofore  carried  by  officers." 

Women  looking  forward  to  professional  work  in  banks 
are  urged  to  meditate  upon  this  last  quotation.  In  general, 
they  need  a  liking  for  figures  and  for  financial  relations  and 
problems ;  an  ability  to  handle  impersonal  details  without 
being  swamped  by  them ;  and  above  all  an  interest  and  belief 
in  the  modern  financial  system.  Otherwise  they  may  find 
themselves  caught  in  a  great  machine  with  the  operations 
of  which  they  have  no  fundamental  sympathy. 

Employment  is  likely  to  be  secured  through  direct  appli- 
cation to  the  employment  or  personnel  departments  of 
financial  institutions;  by  replying  to  the  not  infrequent  ad- 
vertisements of  these  organizations ;  through  the  higher 
grade  business  employment  agencies,  such  as  the  National 
Employment  Exchange  in  New  York  and  the  Business 
Men's  Clearing  House  in  Chicago ;  through  higher  institu- 
tions; and  through  the  bureaus  of  occupations  for  trained 
women. 

Two  large  New  York  banks  and  five  women  in  banking 
positions  filled  our  schedules.  One  bank  has  two  women 
department  heads,  two  managers,  fourteen  secretaries, 
twelve  stenographers,  and  a  hundred  and  forty-four  clerks. 
The  other  gives  no  figures,  but  reports  women  in  executive, 
managerial,  secretarial,  stenographic,  and  typing  positions. 
The  first  employs  men  and  women  in  a  fifty-fifty  ratio  in 
secretarial  work;  in  a  five  to  one  ratio  in  clerical  work. 
Promotion  is  based  upon  efficiency  reports.  "The  women 
have  proved  equally  faithful  and  more  conscientious  and 
painstaking  than  the  men.  They  are  paid  the  same  salaries 
in  everything  but  executive  work.  The  comparatively  few 
college  women  that  we  have  employed  have  done  conspicu- 
ously good  work." 

Of  the  five  women  reporting,  one  is  assistant  secretary  of 
a  metropolitan  trust  company,  promoted  from  the  post  of 
manager  of  the  women's  department ;  one  is  assistant  to 
the  secretary  of  a  regional  branch  of  the  Federal  Land 
Bank;  one  is  librarian  and  file  clerk  in  a  large  New  York 


SPECIAL  COMMERCIAL  SERVICES         265 

firm  of  private  bankers;  one  is  financial  statistician  in  an 
investment  house;  and  one  is  custodian  of  the  safe-deposit 
vault  of  a  country  town  bank.  One  is  a  college  graduate 
and  a  graduate  of  one  of  the  best  law  schools ;  the  others 
are  without  college  education,  but  express  their  regret  at  its 
lack.  Salaries  range  from  $900  to  $2,700  with  a  median 
salary  of  $2,100. 

The  Land  Bank  assistant  says :  "I  dictate  mail,  open  and 
distribute  all  mail,  supervise  clerks,  supervise  all  applica- 
tions for  loans,  check  amount  of  all  loans  approved, 
etc.  .  .  .  My  employer  prefers  women  clerks,  says  he  gets 
more  work  with  less  friction  and  less  talking.  ...  Be 
prompt.  Be  accurate.  Don't  'guess  you  are  right.'  Take 
the  time  and  trouble  to  be  sure  you  are.  ...  I  suppose  by 
great  effort  a  woman  could  become  one  of  the  officers." 
She  reports  no  differences  fn  the  pay  of  men  and  women 
in  clerical  positions. 

The  librarian  and  file  clerk  was  previously  head  stenog- 
rapher for  the  firm,  and  has  held  her  present  position  for 
eight  years,  securing  it  after  two  years  of  service.  She 
says :  "A  big  filing  position  usually  comes  because  you  know 
the  special  business,  and  have  common  sense  and  a  wide 
general  knowledge.  Do  all  work  particularly  dependably ; 
keep  an  open  mind ;  keep  educating  yourself ;  have  an  inter- 
est in  your  work ;  and  don't  be  afraid  of  hard  work  and 
responsibility.  I  have  taken  special  filing  courses  at  Colum- 
bia University,  and  keep  abreast  with  filing  methods.  .  .  . 
Bankers  give  men  many  more  opportunities  than  they  do 
women,  but  I  have  always  been  paid  on  an  equal  footing  for 
what  I  did." 

The  assistant  secretary  of  a  trust  company  says:  "I  am 
an  executive  officer  of  the  company  with  the  same  rights 
and  duties  as  the  other  assistant  secretaries,  who  are  all 
men.  I  never  worked  until  I  went  to  the  trust  company 
three  years  ago.  In  that  time  my  salary  has  more  tiian 
doubled." 

The  custodian  says:  "I  have  entire  charge  of  the  safe- 
deposit  vaults,  and  do  some  stenography  and  clerical  work. 
I  have  worked  at  the  teller's  window,  and  have  run  the 
general  ledger  and  the  bookkeeper's  ledger.     My  advice  to 


266        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

other  women  in  banking  is  to  be  able  to  mind  one's  own 
business  and  to  remember  that  we  are  servants  of  the 
PubHc." 

Reports  of  the  occupations  of  members  of  the  classes 
of  1917  and  1918  were  furnished  us  during  the  summer 
of  1919  by  Barnard,  Mount  Holyoke,  Radcliffe,  and  Vassar 
Colleges.  Nineteen  graduates  of  191 7  were  reported  as 
employed  by  banks  or  other  financial  institutions ;  thirty- 
three  graduates  of  1918.  Of  fourteen  graduates  of  one 
college,  six  were  in  clerical  positions ;  one  investigate'd  cus- 
tomers for  the  central  files ;  one  was  assistant  collection 
teller  in  a  southwestern  bank,  two  were  bond  salesmen  for 
a  large  New  England  banking  and  investment  firm ;  one  was 
in  the  reference  library  of  a  New  York  trust  company ; 
another  was  research  assistant  in  the  foreign  trade  bureau 
of  the  same  institution,  where  she  "helped  American  ex- 
porters to  plan  their  foreign  trade  campaigns."  One  was  in 
charge  of  the  government  bond  work  in  a  shipbuilding 
company.  Another  was  director  of  a  vacation  savings  club 
for  working  girls  under  the  auspices  of  a  middle-western 
trust  and  savings  bank.  Young  college  graduates  are  look- 
ing upon  banking  as  the  latest  occupational  adventure. 


Insurance  is  fundamentally  the  selling  of  financial  pro- 
tection and  provision  for  the  future  in  return  for  periodic 
payments  or  "premiums"  made  by  or  in  the  name  of  the 
insured  person  or  persons.  To  those  buying  insurance, 
it  represents  a  form  of  thrift  or  saving,  an  investment 
at  a  low  rate  of  interest,  and  a  guaranty  against  sudden 
financial  loss — by  fire,  accident,  sickness,  or  death.  An  in- 
s-urance  company  is  in  one  sense  a  great  trust  company, 
caring  for  the  funds  of  all  its  policy  holders  and  investing 
them  safely.  It  is  also  a  great  loan  agency,  making  loans 
to  its  policy  holders  on  the  basis  of  premiums  paid.  The 
organization  of  an  insurance  company  is  "much  the  same 
as  that  of  any  other  corporation  which  has  to  do  with  the 
collecting,  investing,  and  disbursing  forms  of  money."  But 
because  its  customers  are  many  and  widely  scattered,  and 


SPECIAL  COMMERCIAL  SERVICES         267 

because  its  benefits  are  not  immediate  but  future,  and  pay- 
ments are  likely  to  lapse,  the  insurance  company  has  to 
seek  business  far  more  than  does  the  bank  or  investment 
house  and  to  maintain  a  far  larger  force  of  outside  sales- 
men or  insurance  agents  as  they  are  called.  Moreover, 
to  do  business  with  justice  and  profit  to  both  parties  to 
the  insurance  contract,  it  must  make  elaborate  calculations 
of  the  probabilities  of  various  events — deaths  at  various 
ages  and  in  various  occupations ;  sickness,  injury,  fires, 
wrecks,  accidents  and  damages  of  all  sorts.  This  is  the 
actuarial  side  of  insurance ;  the  actuary  is  the  mathematical 
expert  in  the  insurance  field.  Closely  allied  is  the  insurance 
statistician,  who  compiles  "mortality,"  "morbidity,"  and 
other  statistics.  The  modern  life  insurance  medical  depart- 
ment is  fast  becoming  a  public  health  department  as  well, 
employing  not  only  medical  examiners  of  insurance  "risks" 
but  health  experts  who  fight  for  the  reduction  of  disease 
and  the  prolongation  of  life.  In  the  same  way  in  property 
insurance,  there  is  a  constant  effort  to  improve  construction 
and  to  supply  efficient  inspection.  As  a  great  financial  in- 
stitution with  the  character  of  its  investments  and  opera- 
tions regulated  by  law,  the  insurance  company  likewise  em- 
ploys many  financial  and  legal  experts,  efficiency  engineers, 
and  so  on.  In  many  cases  employing  hundreds  of  people 
in  its  "home  office"  and  other  hundreds  in  the  field,  it 
requires  department,  office,  and  "sales"  managers.  It  is 
organizing  personnel  services  of  various  kinds — employ- 
ment, education,  restaurant,  club,  and  recreation  facilities, 
buying  and  savings  arrangements.  The  character  of  in- 
surance work  also  requires  advertising,  information,  and 
research  departments. 

The  best  known  and  oldest  forms  of  insurance  are  life, 
fire,  and  marine  insurance.  But  there  are  now  practically 
no  risks  to  life  or  property  against  which  insurance  is  not 
procurable  or  contemplated.  The  idea  of  social  insurance 
is  becoming  familiar  in  this  country;  and  many  people 
believe  that  every  citizen  should  have  the  protection  of  in- 
surance, and  that  inequalities  of  hazard  should  be  met  at 
least  partly  by  the  state.  Workmen's  compensation  laws 
have  been  passed  within  the  past  decade  by  some  twenty-six 


268        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

states.  The  War-Risk  Insurance  system  for  soldiers  and 
sailors  has  brought  the  federal  government  into  the  insur- 
ance business  on  a  large  scale.  Legislation  for  health  insur- 
ance is  being  widely  advocated.  Old-age  insurance,  unem- 
ployment insurance,  and  maternity  insurance,  backed  by  the 
state,  are  still  considered  radical  in  the  United  States,  but 
have  a  growing  body  of  supporters.  "Fraternal"  or  mutual 
benefit  insurance  societies  have  long  existed.  Nowadays 
many  firms  are  taking  out  "group  insurance"  for  their  em- 
ployees. 

Not  so  long  ago  the  term  "insurance-agent"  was  used 
almost  as  contemptuously  as  "book-agent"  or  "canvasser." 
The  old  practice  of  paying  commissions  to  any  local  per- 
son who  wrote  a  little  insurance  as  a  side  issue  encouraged 
a  class  of  persons  to  enter  the  business  "who  considered  the 
interests  neither  of  the  company  nor  of  the  policy-holder, 
and  very  grave  evils  developed.  The  old  type  of  agent  .  .  . 
was  simply  ...  a  solicitor."  ^  But  the  modern  insurance 
company  organizes,  trains,  and  supervises  its  selling  force 
according  to  the  principles  and  methods  used  in  the  sell- 
ing of  other  essential  commodities  and  services;  so  that 
insurance  salesmanship  is  becoming  more  and  more  an 
occupation  of  professional  standing,  with  a  definite  profes- 
sion technique  and  spirit  and  a  definite  group  of  professional 
problems  calling  for  investigation.  Companies  vary  in  the 
organization  of  their  agents.  Some  direct  and  supervise  them 
entirely  from  the  home  office.  Some  appoint  a  general 
agent  on  a  commission  basis  for  a  certain  territory,  respon- 
sible for  results  but  with  large  control  of  the  agents  under 
him.  Some  have  branch  offices  throughout  the  country  in 
charge  of  salaried  managers  but  with  central  administration 
and  supervision.  Insurance  agents  have  in  the  past  been 
paid  almost  exclusively  on  a  commission  basis,  but  as  with 
bond  salesmen,  there  is  a  tendency  nowadays  toward  a 
combination  of  salary  and  commission. 

Many  companies   now   have   a   women's   department   in 

both  home  and  branch   offices,  in  charge  of  women  and 

with  a  corps  of  women  agents  organized  to  sell  to  women. 

Women  agents,  however,  like  women  bond  salesmen,  are 

'  Warren  M.  Horner.    Training  of  a  Life  Insurance  Agent. 


SPECIAL  COMMERCIAL  SERVICES         269 

successfully  writing  insurance  for  both  men  and  women; 
and  the  time  may  not  be  far  distant  when  separate  "women's 
departments"  will  become  obsolete. 

Apart  from  selling  insurance  as  agents,  women  may  enter 
the  insurance  field  through  the  various  "home"  or  "branch" 
office  departments — actuarial,  medical,  legal,  financial,  per- 
sonnel, research,  publicity.  The  work  of  an  insurance 
actuary  is  perhaps  the  most  diffi.cult  and  technical  expert 
work  to  be  found  in  the  commercial  world,  and  requires 
prolonged  training  and  special  mathematical  aptitude.  To 
become  an  actuary  in  the  full  sense  of  the  term  involves 
membership  in  one  of  the  actuarial  societies,  such  as  the 
Actuarial  Society  of  America  or  the  American  Institute  of 
Actuaries,  which  are  entered  through  passing  a  series  of 
difficult  examinations.  Some  insurance  companies  are  will- 
ing to  take  a  small  number  of  picked  young  college  women 
into  their  actuarial  departments  for  training,  but  such  op- 
portunities are  limited.  The  growth  of  insurance  com- 
panies, industrial  insurance,  and  pension  systems  has  in- 
creased the  demand  for  actuaries ;  but  they  are  relatively 
few  in  number.  The  1910  census  gives  286  men  and  10 
women  in  the  profession. 

Women  doctors  are  to  some  extent  medical  examiners 
for  women  applicants  for  insurance,  usually  combining  this 
work  with  other  forms  of  practice.  Some  companies,  not- 
ably the  Metropolitan  Life  Insurance  Company,  which  does 
an  enormous  business  in  insuring  industrial  wage  earners 
and  others  of  small  income,  have  gone  into  extensive  pre- 
ventive public  health  work.  For  some  years  this  com- 
pany has  had  an  arrangement  with  visiting  nurse  asso- 
ciations by  means  of  which  its  policy-holders  receive  nurs- 
ing care.  It  issues  a  large  number  of  pamphlets  on  matters 
of  health  and  living  to  its  policy-holders.  For  several  years 
it  has  been  cooperating  with  the  National  Tuberculosis  As- 
sociation in  making  an  intensive  health  study  and  demonstra- 
tion in  Framingham.  Massachusetts,  of  which  a  series  of 
reports  have  been  recently  issued.  That  public  health  work 
on  the  part  of  life  insurance  companies  is  not  purely  philan- 
thropic by  no  means  lessens  its  value ;  and  it  offers  a  field 
of    professional    and    social    interest    to    qualified    women 


270       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

and  providing  a  unique  opportunity  to  check  up  results 
The  complicated  field  of  insurance  law  offers  an  op- 
portunity to  women  lawyers  who  prefer  salaried  office  posi- 
tions to  independent  practice.^  Insurance  companies  are 
also  employing  women  statisticians,  expert  accountants, 
auditors,  adjusters,  advertising  and  editorial  workers,  and 
workers  in  various  personnel  services.  But  on  the  whole, 
they  have  not  turned  to  college  women  as  a  source  of  pro- 
fessional labor  supply  to  the  extent  of  banks  and  public 
utility  companies.  Individually,  however,  college  women  are 
going  into  insurance  in  considerable  numbers ;  and  the  com- 
panies are  becoming  aware  of  them  and  their  possibilities. 
Professional  schools  of  commerce  and  business  admin- 
istration offer  courses  on  various  types  of  insurance ;  and 
the  larger  and  more  progressive  companies  conduct  training 
courses  for  agents,  and  hold  periodic  conferences.  They 
are  beginning  to  cooperate  with  higher  institutions  in  in- 
tensive courses  for  selected  workers  in  their  service.  Such 
a  course  was  carried  on  in  1919-1920  at  the  Carnegie  In- 
stitute of  Technology.  Associations  of  insurance  workers 
are  for  the  most  part  open  to  both  men  and  women ;  and 
insurance  women  have  formed  associations  of  their  own  only 
when,  as  in  Massachusetts,  the  men's  associations  do  not 
admit  them;  or  for  some  special  purpose,  as  in  New  York, 
in  order  to  join  the  Federation  of  Business  and  Professional 
Women's  Clubs.  Employment  is  as  yet  probably  best  se- 
cured through  direct  application. 

Our  schedules  give  returns  from  two  insurance  com- 
panies, a  life  and  an  accident  and  indemnity  company ; 
and  from  eight  women  in  the  insurance  field.  One  firm 
employs  fifty-seven  women  in  the  home  office,  of  whom  three 
occupy  higher  clerical  positions  of  responsibility  in  the  re- 
newal, loan,  and  group  insurance  departments  respectively. 
Eight  are  stenographers,  and  the  rest  routine  clerks  and 
typists.  The  other  employs  no  women  except  in  routine 
clerical  positions.  It  says :  "We  prefer  men,  for  reasons  too 
general  for  analysis.  They  are  markedly  more  persistent 
than  the  average  woman.  .  .  .  The  war  has  greatly  enlarged 

^  See  Women  in  the  Law.  Bureau  of  Vocational  Information. 
Bulletin  Three,  pp.  73-81. 


I 


SPECIAL  COMMERCIAL  SERVICES         271 

the  scope,  opportunity,  and  possibilities  of  women  in  busi- 
ness, and  the  demand  will  increase.  .  .  .  It  is  to  be  re- 
gretted that  with  the  present  demand  .  .  .  more  women  do 
not  seem  to  understand  or  care  to  appreciate  their  respon- 
sible connection  with  the  business  undertaken  by  them. 
They  need  to  develop  a  much  more  serious  intent." 

Of  the  eight  women,  three  are  managers  of  women's 
departments  in  branch  offices  of  large  life  insurance  com- 
panies; one  is  assistant  secretary  of  a  western  farmers' 
cooperative  insurance  association;  one  is  an  independent 
insurance  and  real  estate  broker ;  another  is  connected  with 
a  similar  agency;  two  are  private  secretaries  to  insurance 
executives.  Three  are  college  graduates;  one  is  a  normal 
school  graduate.  The  three  salaries  reported  ranged  in 
1919  from  $1,200  to  $1,800.  The  incomes  from  commis- 
sions or  commissions  and  salary  combined  ranged  from 
$3,800  to  nearly  $10,000.  The  managers  secured  employment 
as  agents  through  direct  application,  and  have  reached  their 
present  positions  through  promotion.  They  supervise  and 
instruct  staffs  of  women  agents,  and  help  sell  insurance, 
one  of  them  to  both  men  and  women.  Two  are  paid  on  a 
commission  basis ;  one  receives  a  salary  and  commissions. 

A  manager  says  :  "For  those  trained  in  salesmanship,  there 
is  no  limit  to  the  amount  they  can  earn.  It  is  commission 
work,  and  depends  absolutely  upon  individual  effort  and 
initiative.  Our  company  has  a  thorough  educational  course 
and  educational  director ;  and  one  can  graduate  and  receive 
a  diploma.  The  company  circularizes  fifty  names  a  week  for 
each  agent,  and  through  the  answers  puts  agents  in  direct 
touch  with  live  prospects.  It  keeps  in  personal  touch  with 
'every  agent  through  its  'efficiency  staff.'  " 

Another  says :  "Do  not  enter  unless  willing  to  work  harder 
than  in  any  other  occupation.  Health,  backbone,  and  un- 
tiring energy  are  the  first  requisites." 

The  real  estate  and  insurance  broker  says:  "I  sell  real 
estate,  look  after  and  manage  apartment  houses  and  busi- 
ness buildings;  and  sell  life,  fire,  automobile,  burglary, 
accident,  and  all  kinds  of  insurance.  ...  I  advise  women 
going  into  this  work  to  get  a  high-school  or  college  educa- 
tion, to  make  plenty  of  friends,  not  a  few,  to  get  practical 


272       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

business  experience,  and  to  study  their  particular  subject 
so  that  they  know  it." 

Of  the  graduates  of  1917  and  1918  of  Barnard,  Mount 
Holyoke,  RadcHffe,  and  Vassar,  eighteen  are  reported  as  in- 
surance workers  of  some  sort.  One  young  woman  has  re- 
cently taken  a  two  months'  course,  given  by  one  of  the 
largest  companies. 


Public  utilities  include  principally  telephone  and  tele- 
graph companies,  light  and  power  companies,  and  street 
and  steam  railways.  For  the  most  part  they  offer  non- 
competitive service  to  a  given  community,  and  are  under  the 
regulation  of  special  laws  and  in  some  states  of  public 
service  boards  or  commissions.  The  Interstate  Commerce 
Commission  is  a  federal  board.  These  services  affect  the 
daily  convenience  and  comfort  of  the  public,  and  they  em- 
ploy large  numbers  of  people  in  direct  contact  with  the 
public,  so  that  the  problems  of  securing,  training,  and  super- 
vising personnel  are  peculiarly  important.  For  the  same 
reasons  and  for  the  reason  that  their  bonds  and  stocks  are 
usually  sound  investments,  they  employ  many  advertising 
and  publicity  workers.  As  great  service  and  financial  cor- 
porations, they  require  executives  and  financial  experts  of 
many  kinds.  They  likewise  require  many  statisticians,  com- 
puters, and  efficiency  engineers,  and  are  in  intimate  relations 
with  industries  manufacturing  their  equipment  and  sup- 
plies, or  maintain  such  industries  themselves. 

Our  schedules  give  replies  from  a  great  telephone  cor- 
poration and  from  several  branches  of  a  subsidiary  com- 
pany ;  also  from  the  Women's  Service  Section  of  the  United 
States  Railroad  Administration,  now  discontinued  with  the 
return  of  the  roads  to  corporation  management.  Six  women 
return  schedules — two  in  telephone  companies,  three  in  rail- 
roads, one  in  a  gas  company. 

The  telephone  corporation  employs  women  in  executive, 
technical,  and  higher  clerical  positions  in  its  employment, 
instruction,  technical,  and  development  work.  "For  college 
women  taking  up  instruction  work  in  the  traffic  department 
there  is  a  six  months'  course  affording  an  opportunity  for 


SPECIAL  COMMERCIAL  SERVICES         273 

learning  the  detail  of  the  work  necessary  to  perform  in- 
telHgently  the  work  required  of  those  engaged  in  instruc- 
tion or  in  the  development  of  instruction  courses  and 
methods.  .  .  .  Practically  all  college  women  are  doing 
work  which  gives  abundant  opportunity  for  initiative  and 
the  expression  of  their  ideas.  .  .  .  The  work  itself  is  to 
a  large  extent  being  developed  by  them.  .  .  .  Generally 
speaking  we  do  not  employ  men  and  women  in  comparable 
positions.  During  the  war,  however,  we  employed  about 
fifteen  college  women  for  work  which  previously  had  been 
handled  by  men.  .  .  .  My  impression  is  that  college  trained 
men  are  more  stable  in  their  employment.  This  is  to  be 
expected,  as,  generally  speaking,  women  are  more  uncer- 
tain in  their  minds  as  to  these  newer  lines  of  employment 
open  to  them,  the  relative  advantages,  etc.  Furthermore, 
the  lines  of  work  themselves  are  not  so  fully  established  as 
those  open  to  men.  .  .  .  From  the  economic  standpoint, 
college  women  are  more  likely  to  be  independent,  and  there- 
fore are  more  able  to  take  the  risk  that  may  be  involved 
in  a  change.  .  .  .  This  one  conclusion  stands  out  rather 
clearly:  that  in  established  lines  of  work  non-college  trained 
women  with  company  experience  are  preferable.  In  new 
lines  of  work  requiring  research  and  a  greater  degree  of 
imagination  and  initiative,  the  college  trained  women  excel. 
.  .  .  Our  experience  has  been  that  women  who  have  re- 
ceived their  training  at  coeducational  institutions  have  done 
better  in  our  work  than  those  trained  at  other  colleges. 
This  seems  to  be  due  to  the  fact  that  they  are  able  to 
elect  courses  closely  related  to  business  which  are  not 
available  at  most  of  the  other  colleges.  It  would  appear 
also  that  conducting  the  work  in  classes  with  men  is  ad- 
vantageous if  they  later  go  into  business.  .  .  .  Our  opinion 
is  that  it  is  desirable  for  women  to  major  in  mathematics 
and  economics  and  to  take  perhaps  one  of  the  exact  sciences. 
It  is  especially  advantageous  to  them  to  have  training  in 
exact  thinking  and  reasoning.  Economics  gives  a  back- 
ground which  is  valuable  for  any  one  going  into  business, 
and  perhaps  is  especially  desirable  for  women  in  order  that 
they  may  feel  as  much  at  home  as  possible.  ...  It  would 
be  good  advice  to  trained  women  going  into  business  to 


274        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

recognize  that  it  is  still  substantially  a  pioneer  movement, 
and  that  they  can  help  themselves  and  those  who  will  follow 
them  by  persisting  in  the  fields  which  they  enter,  having 
patience  to  develop  them  in  a  satisfactory  manner,  ...  I 
have  noted  a  certain  roving  tendency  among  a  number  of 
college-trained  women." 

The  manager  of  the  Women's  Service  Section  of  the 
U.  S.  Railway  Administration,  which  was  established  in 
the  summer  of  1918  to  look  after  the  interests  of  women 
employed  by  railway  companies,  reports  that  her  office  em- 
ployed four  field  agents,  one  statistician,  and  two  stenog- 
raphers, practically  all  college  women.  With  regard  to  the 
relative  efficiency  of  men  and  women  doing  similar  work, 
she  says :  "It  depends  on  proper  training  and  selection. 
Women  are  as  efficient  as  men  after  gaining  the  same  ex- 
perience. But  objection  is  often  made  that  women  are 
absent  more  frequently,  are  less  punctual,  and  have  less 
ambition  than  men.  There  is,  unfortunately,  some  truth  in 
this  criticism.  Women  need  training  in  exactness,  careful 
observation,  and  proper  impersonal  point  of  view.  Women 
on  the  whole  take  criticism  of  their  work  too  personally." 
This  emphasis  upon  the  need  of  impersonality  recurs  fre- 
quently. 

Salaries  reported  in  public  utilities  work  ranged  in  1918 
and  1919  from  $1,440  to  $5,000  with  a  median  salary  of 
$2,184.  A  college  woman  who  is  head  instructor  in  the 
traffic  department  of  a  great  telephone  corporation,  who 
has  been  a  teacher  and  done  graduate  work  in  two  uni- 
versities, and  who  majored  in  college  in  mathematics  and 
chemistry,  says  :  "I  do  administrative  work,  arranging  sched- 
ules, classes,  instructors'  hours  and  duties ;  and  have  general 
oversight  of  the  instructional  work.  ...  I  came  into  this 
work  with  the  knowledge  that  one  college-trained  woman 
had  made  a  great  success,  and  that  others  like  her  were 
needed.  The  size  and  reputation  of  the  company  were 
sufficient  guarantee  of  advancement  if  one  made  good.  I 
should  like  to  have  a  better  knowledge  of  English  and  his- 
tory, and  I  should  like  to  be  able  to  use  stenography  and 
typewriting  as  tools.  College  men  and  women  are  employed 
and  given  a  six  months'  course  before  they  are  assigned  to 


SPECIAL  COMMERCIAL  SERVICES         275 

regular  positions.  Women  are  employed  as  operators,  chief 
operators,  and  instructors.  They  report  to  men,  who  hold 
all   the  higher  positions." 

A  toll-traffic  chief  in  a  southwestern  branch  of  the  same 
company  says :  "I  instruct,  make  studies  of  operating  loads, 
position  loads,  and  circuit  loads ;  and  supervise  the  work  of 
the  department." 

A  field  agent  for  the  Women's  Service  Section  of  the 
Railway  Administration  is  a  university  woman  with  a 
year's  graduate  work  in  social  research.  She  has  been  a 
teacher  and  a  supervisor  of  evening  schools  for  immigrants. 
She  says :  "I  make  investigations  into  the  nature  of  the  work 
of  women  railway  employees,  their  rates  of  pay,  etc.,  andi 
write  reports  of  the  same.  The  men  agents  in  this  work 
are  empowered  to  make  adjustments;  our  work  is  purely  an 
inspection  and  investigation  service.  In  work  of  this  sort, 
be  sure  of  your  ability  to  meet  people  of  all  kinds,  to  put 
up  with  the  hardships  of  almost  constant  travel,  to  write 
clearly  and  concisely  of  your  impressions  and  investiga- 
tions. Keep  in  touch  with  the  leading  social,  political,  and 
industrial  movements  of  the  times." 

A  woman  of  twenty-eight  years  of  age  reports  that  she 
has  recently  been  promoted  to  the  position  of  car  dis- 
tributor on  a  southwestern  railroad.  She  is  a  high  school 
graduate  with  some  college  courses,  and  has  been  a  book- 
keeper, statistician,  and  trainmaster's  clerk.  She  says :  "I 
fill  orders  for  all  classes  of  equipment  for  an  entire  division. 
If  women  can  do  the  work,  they  have  the  same  opportunity 
as  men.  The  important  thing  is  to  use  common,  everyday 
reason  and  to  be  able  to  master  any  situation." 

While  this  is  probably  an  isolated  case,  it  shows  that 
executive  positions  in  railroad  transportation  are  not  a 
closed  field  to  women  of  ability  and  ambition.  A  woman 
is  director  of  women  employees  of  the  Pennsylvania  Rail- 
road. The  New  York  Central  Railroad  is  employing  some 
young  college  women  as  draftsmen. 

The  four  women's  colleges  mentioned  above  show  twelve 
graduates  of  191 7  and  1918  employed  by  public  utilities 
companies  in  such  capacities  as  computers,  engineering  as- 
sistants, draftsmen,  and  assistant  auditors. 


276        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

Like  insurance,  the  real  estate  business  has  an  unprofes- 
sional past,  and  it  has  not  so  largely  lived  it  down.  In 
many  respects  it  is  still  a  highly  competitive  and  even 
speculative  occupation.  But  the  growth  of  large  real  estate 
organizations;  the  establishment  of  real  estate  boards  and 
exchanges  with  regulations  followed  by  reputable  firms ; 
the  fact  that  buying,  selling,  or  renting  real  property  are 
complicated  matters  in  which  the  individual  needs  the  serv- 
ices of  experts  to  supply  information  and  to  render  legal, 
financial,  or  other  assistance — all  tend  to  raise  it  to  a  pro- 
fessional level,  and  to  develop  among  its  leaders  the  group 
spirit,  the  continuing  study  of  problems  and  techniques,  and 
the  regard  for  public  interest  which  a  profession  demands. 
The  essentially  public  character  of  buildings  and  their  rela- 
tions to  public  welfare  are  recognized  at  least  negatively 
by  building  codes  and  the  inspections  based  upon  them. 
Moreover,  the  housing  shortage  of  all  kinds  due  to  the  re- 
duction in  building  during  the  war  and  the  war-time  ex- 
perience in  great  military  and  industrial  housing  projects 
have  focused  attention  upon  the  building  and  real  estate 
expansion  which  is  already  upon  us,  and  render  it  prob- 
able that  it  will  be  carried  on  with  a  greater  regard  than 
heretofore  for  sound  city  development  and  the  interests 
of  all  groups  in  the  population.  There  has  never  been  so 
hopeful  an  opportunity  for  cooperation  between  those  deal- 
ing with  real  estate  as  a  business  or  profession  and  those 
concerned  with  housing  and  city  and  town  planning  from 
a  social  and  civic  point  of  view.  The  housing  movement 
is  described  in  Chapter  VIII. 

Real  estate  is  a  form  of  brokerage  with  the  real  estate 
dealer  or  firm  charging  a  commission  for  services.  Where 
the  company  itself  owns  houses  and  land  which  it  puts 
up  for  sale  or  rent,  it  is  a  form  of  merchandising.  There 
is  a  definite  "real  estate  market."  Many  real  estate  firms 
specialize  in  one  kind  of  property,  such  as  office  buildings, 
apartment  houses,  factory  sites,  suburban  residences,  farm 
lands.  Others  specialize  in  some  one  neighborhood.  Others 
do  a  general  real  estate  business.  Large  firms  have  rent- 
ing, sales,  mortgage  and  loan,  legal,  and  other  departments. 
Real  estate  transactions  involve  many  legal  and  financial 


SPECIAL  COMMERCIAL  SERVICES         ^yy 

matters  connected  with  deeds,  mortgages,  loans,  taxation, 
insurance.  Companies  or  estates  owning  apartment  houses, 
tenement  houses,  private  houses,  office  buildings,  employ- 
renting  agents  and  rent  collectors.  They  have  many  deal- 
ings with  architects  and  engineers. 

It  has  been  said  that  real  estate  requires  a  smaller 
amount  of  initial  capital  than  any  other  comparable  busi- 
ness. This  is  perhaps  one  reason  why  a  good  many  women 
have  gone  into  it  in  a  modest  way  for  themselves,  and  have 
sometimes  built  up  considerable  businesses,  usually  in  resi- 
dential suburban  property  or  in  city  apartments  and  houses. 
A  number  of  women  are  apartment  house  agents ;  a  few 
are  apartment  house  superintendents  or  managers.  A  large 
firm  in  New  York  concerned  with  the  building  of  model 
tenements  and  workingmen's  houses  employs  women  pur- 
chasing agents,  rent  collectors,  and  resident  superintendents. 
A  woman  has  been  in  charge  of  the  tenement  properties 
of  the  Trinity  Corporation.  The  Octavia  Hill  Association  in 
Philadelphia  has  for  years  had  women  rent  collectors  and 
other  workers.  New  York  City  has  women  tenement- 
house  and  fire-prevention  inspectors. 

Outside  of  philanthropic  or  semi-philanthropic  enter- 
prises, there  have  been  few  college  or  professional  women 
in  the  real  estate  field.  Some  women  have  been  left  property 
to  manage;  others  have  begun  as  clerks  or  stenographers 
in  real  estate  offices;  others  have  found  chance  openings. 
In  1914  a  study  of  opportunities  for  women  in  the  real 
estate  business  in  Boston  and  its  suburbs  was  made  by  the 
Women's  Educational  and  Industrial  Union.^  It  found 
that  local  real  estate  firms  were  not  willing  to  employ  women 
except  as  stenographers,  and  that  to  gain  practical  experi- 
ence in  an  office,  a  woman  was  obliged  to  use  stenography 
as  an  "entering  wedge."  While  there  were  a  number  of 
college  men  in  the  real  estate  business,  no  college  women 
were  found.  Twenty-two  women  real  estate  brokers  were 
interviewed,  practically  all  in  the  field.  It  is  probable  that  ac- 
cess to  real  estate  offices  in  Boston  is  now  less  restricted. 

As  yet,  real  estate  workers  have  not  formulated  any  re- 

*  Opportunities  for  Women  in  the  Business  of  Real  Estate.  Vo- 
cations for  the  Trained  Woman.     Part  2   (1914)- 


278       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

quirements  for  professional  training,  although  a  recent  con- 
vention discussed  the  professional  character  of  the  occupa- 
tion, and  urged  some  form  of  public  registration  for  its 
practitioners.  Schools  of  business  administration  devote 
some  attention  to  this  field ;  and  the  Young  Men's  Christian 
Association  has  offered  courses  for  young  men  interested 
in  becoming  real  estate  agents,  rent  collectors,  and  so  on. 
Training  in  law,  finance,  advertising,  engineering,  archi- 
tecture, salesmanship,  and  psychology  are  all  valuable. 

Only  three  women  in  real  estate  returned  our  schedules : 
the  real  estate  and  insurance  broker  already  described ;  a 
woman  in  the  managing  department  of  a  New  York  realty 
company;  and  a  woman  conducting  a  general  real  estate 
business  of  her  own  in  a  small  western  city.  The  man- 
ager is  a  married  woman,  a  college  graduate  with  two  years 
of  work  in  a  law  school,  who  entered  the  business  because 
it  was  a  family  affair.  She  says :  "I  am  a  member  of  the 
firm,  and  act  as  agent  or  manager.  I  do  renting,  managing 
apartment  houses,  engaging  help,  ordering  supplies,  con- 
tracting for  work  to  be  done.  Positions  are  secured  through 
applying  at  real  estate  offices,  advertising,  and  so  on." 


CHAPTER  XV 

INFORMATION    SERVICES:    JOURNALISM,    PUBLISHING,    ADVER- 
TISING, PUBLICITY 

The  information  services  dealt  v^ith  in  this  chapter, 
though  distinct,  have  many  principles,  methods,  and  atti- 
tudes of  mind  in  common ;  and  workers  pass  easily  from 
one  to  the  other.  All  of  them  are,  in  a  sense,  forms  of 
merchandising  commodities  known  as  news,  information, 
literature,  through  the  media  of  print  and  the  graphic  and 
visual  arts,  including  in  these  days  the  motion-picture.  Their 
common  purpose  is  communication ;  to  produce  changes  in 
thoughts  and  feelings  and  consequently  in  conduct.  The 
psychological  principles  involved  are  broadly  those  of  sales- 
manship, although  the  powerful  stimulations  of  bodily  pres- 
ence and  voice  are  lacking.  On  the  other  hand,  the  range 
of  appeal  is  infinitely  greater,  and  there  is  a  greater  em- 
phasis upon  the  effects  of  repetition,  suggestion,  and  "mar- 
ginal attention."  On  the  mechanical  side,  all  of  them,  di- 
rectly or  indirectly,  produce  manufactured  articles — news- 
papers, books,  magazines,  bill-boards,  catalogues,  posters, 
films.  As  industries,  they  employ  skilled  industrial  workers 
and  managers  and  experts  of  various  kinds. 

But  the  professional  workers  discussed  here  are  concerned 
v/ith  the  collection,  organization,  and  transmission  of  facts 
and  ideas.  They  perform  a  "public  utility"  service  ex- 
ceeding that  rendered  by  railroad,  telegraph  and  telephone, 
and  power  companies,  and  like  them  carry  on  a  process  of 
distribution  essential  to  modern  civilization.  In  a  democ- 
racy, their  professional  obligations  and  professional  oppor- 
tunities are  second  only  to  those  of  teachers. 

Although  they  market  literature  as  they  market  stock  re- 
ports, they  are  in  no  sense  literary  workers,  and  their  occu- 

279 


28o       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

pations  have  little  to  do  with  literature  proper,  the  creative 
interpretation  of  some  aspect  of  life  through  the  vehicle  of 
language.  Young  literary  aspirants  are  frequently  under 
a  romantic  misapprehension  in  this  respect,  to  their  subse- 
quent disillusionment.  A  recent  "vocational  guidance"  bul- 
letin says :  "Literary  work  is  not  a  profession.  'Writing' 
is  a  by-product  of  living.  .  .  .  The  life  of  a  nurse,  a  doctor, 
a  teacher — each  of  these  has  developed  more  successful 
writers  than  has,  for  instance,  a  desk  in  an  editorial  office. 
The  college  graduate  who  wishes  to  write  is  likely  to  con- 
fuse the  business  of  publishing  the  writings  of  others  with 
an  apprenticeship  in  creative  work."  ^  A  reporter,  an 
editor,  a  publisher,  a  writer  of  advertisements,  may  also  be 
a  producer  of  literature ;  but  the  practice  of  his  art  lies  out- 
side of  his  professional  activities.  To  write  themselves  may 
help  editors  and  publishers  to  estimate  the  literary  quality 
of  writings  submitted  to  them.  But  in  general  they  are 
successful  because  they  are  shrewd  and  experienced  judges 
of  their  particular  publics  and  of  the  literary  and  other 
qualities  that  will  appeal  to  them  and  move  them  in  certain 
directions. 

Journalism  and  publishing  are  closely  related  to  advertis- 
ing not  only  because  all  three  make  a  public  appeal  through 
the  printed  word  but  also  because  the  newspaper  and  the 
magazine  are  among  the  most  important  advertising  media, 
and  have  their  advertising  departments  as  they  have  their 
editorial  departments.  Two  recent  books  on  journalism  de- 
vote considerable  space  to  the  advertising  side  of  the  news- 
paper. ^  Advertising  is  highly  profitable  to  a  publication ; 
most  magazines  could  not  be  published  without  it.  The 
charge  is  not  infrequently  made  that  the  policy  of  a  news- 
paper is  controlled  by  its  leading  advertisers ;  and  a  paper 
of  high  standing  must  be  above  reproach  in  this  matter. 
The  financial  power  of  the  advertising  department  is  one 
of  the  modern  dangers  to  the  freedom  of  the  press,  even 
where  there  is  no  taint  of  corruption.     The  book  is  not  a 

*Burges    Johnson.      "Literary    Work,"    Journalism,    Advertising 

(1919)- 

^  James  Melvin   Lee.     Opportunities  in   the  Newspaper  Business 
(1919).    Don  C.  Seitz.     Training  for  the  Newspaper  Trade  (1916). 


INFORMATION  SERVICES  281 

particularly  good  medium  for  advertising,  except  of  other 
publications  by  the  firm.  But  it  is  a  product  which  itself 
needs  advertising,  so  that  book  publishers,  like  other  manu- 
facturers, maintain  departments  for  preparing  and  placing 
their  advertising. 

During  the  war  a  distinction  arose  between  ordinary  ad- 
vertising and  what  has  come  to  be  known  in  a  special  sense 
as  "publicity,"  concerned  with  the  winning  of  public  favor 
and  support  for  specific  organizations  and  causes — patriotic, 
philanthropic,  educational,  political.  War-time  examples 
are  the  appeals  to  the  public  of  the  Food  Administration, 
the  Treasury  in  its  Liberty  Loan  campaigns,  the  Red  Cross, 
and  other  "welfare"  and  relief  organizations.  After-war 
examples  are  the  "drives"  of  the  various  colleges,  the  lavish 
activities  of  the  Interchurch  World  Movement,  the  cam- 
paigns for  the  presidency,  and  the  quieter  and  more  con- 
tinuous efforts  of  charity  organization  and  other  benevolent 
societies  dependent  upon  public  interest.  Practically  all  or- 
ganizations not  maintained  by  public  funds  and  many  that 
are  find  it  necessary  to-day  to  have  permanent  publicity  de- 
partments. In  fact,  two  sorts  of  publicity  have  developed, 
each  with  its  own  techniques,  the  "drive"  or  "campaign" 
for  a  definite  and  limited  period,  with  its  "zones,"  "quotas," 
and  "hundred  per  cent"  memberships  ;  and  the  less  spectacu- 
lar but  not  less  skillful  steady  diffusion  of  information. 
There  are  unmistakable  evidences  of  public  weariness  of 
the  first  method ;  and  the  day  is  fast  approaching  for  a  gen- 
eral investigation  of  the  value  and  validity  of  current  pub- 
licity methods,  and  a  determination  of  what  constitutes  legit- 
imate and  what  illegitimate  publicity.  There  is  a  crying 
need  for  clear  and  fundamental  ethical  standards.  The 
greatest  danger  inherent  in  modern  publicity  comes  from 
the  fact  that  much  of  it  appears  in  the  form  of  contributed 
articles,  not  in  the  form  of  paid  advertisements ;  and  easily 
degenerates  into  an  insidious  kind  of  propaganda.  During 
the  last  few  years  the  enormous  sums  of  money  spent  to 
shape  public  opinion  have  done  more  than  the  rigors  and 
stupidities  of  official  censorships  to  weaken  public  confi- 
dence in  the  independence  and  accuracy  of  the  press.  The 
growing  use  of  advertising  space  by  political  parties,  labor 


282        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

organizations,  civic,  philanthropic,  and  educational  bodies, 
has  much  to  commend  it,  since  the  source  and  terms  of  the 
appeals  are  clearly  understood.  Abuses  of  advertising  have 
been,  and  may  be,  controlled  by  law.  But  "inspired  articles" 
exploit  the  public,  and  breed  an  ultimate  distrust  of  the 
cause  advocated  and  of  the  press  itself. 

On  the  other  hand,  a  democratic  form  of  government 
and  the  complexities  of  modern  industrial  society  require 
constant  dissemination  of  information  and  the  full  presen- 
tation of  various  programs  and  points  of  view.  Only  thus 
can  there  be  intelligent  discussion  and  sound  social  progress. 
It  has  become  only  too  easy  to  stigmatize  the  opinions  of 
opponents  as  "propaganda"  and  to  use  the  term  only  in 
a  disparaging  sense.  There  is  a  kind  of  publicity  that  is 
genuinely  educational  and  necessary.  It  is  based  on  a 
constant  study  of  group  psycholog)^  and  a  realization  that 
people  to-day  suffer  not  so  much  from  lack  of  knowledge 
as  from  a  surplus  of  shifting  and  half-digested  knowledge. 
It  aims  to  select,  organize,  and  present  authentic  informa- 
tion in  such  a  fashion  that  its  bearings  upon  individual 
conduct  and  public  policy  and  welfare  may  become  mani- 
fest. The  ethical  and  social  responsibilities  of  the  press 
have  long  been  recognized,  if  not  always  lived  up  to.  It  is 
coming  to  be  seen  that  advertising  and  all  forms  of  paid 
publicity  must  conform  to  similar  standards. 

Closely  allied  to  publicity  are  the  "information"  and  "re- 
search" departments  maintained  by  an  increasing  number 
of  industrial,  commercial,  and  social  organizations,  or  estab- 
lished as  independent  bureaus  supplying  service.  The  pri- 
mary object  of  such  departments  is  to  collect  and  organize 
information  needed  by  those  conducting  a  business  or  other 
enterprise ;  to  study  its  methods  of  production  or  distribu- 
tion ;  to  keep  actual  customers  or  patrons  informed  of 
progress.  The  primary  object  of  a  publicity  or  advertising 
department  is  to  reach  a  public  as  yet  uninformed,  who 
may  become  purchasers,  contributors,  political  supporters, 
followers  of  new  ideas  and  methods.  An  important  function 
of  the  federal  government  is  to  serve  as  a  central  agency 
for  research,  information,  and  publicity  of-  an  educational 
character.     The   Departments   of   Agriculture,   Commerce, 


INFORMATION  SERVICES  283 

and  Labor,  and  the  Bureau  of  Education  are  striking  ex- 
amples. 

The  two  kinds  of  service  are  often  rendered  by  the 
same  organization,  akhough  the  methods  employed  and 
the  professional  workers  concerned  are  different.  There 
is  some  danger  at  present  that  their  respective  objects  may 
not  be  clearly  recognized,  and  that  so-called  information 
and  research  services  may  exist  to  exploit  the  public  in 
one  way  or  another.  Professional  w^orkers  need  to  look 
carefully  into  the  standing  and  backing  of  such  services 
before  becoming  connected  with  them.  "Research"  has  be- 
come a  fashionable  term  in  business.  But  many  firms  are 
recognizing  that  the  authenticity  and  value  of  the  facts 
which  they  set  forth  are  a  matter  of  social  obligation  as 
well  as  an  important  commercial  asset. 


Journalism  is  professional  work  connected  with  the  issu- 
ing of  daily  or  weekly  papers  reporting  and  commenting  edi- 
torially upon  the  news  of  the  day;  publishing,  the  work 
connected  with  the  issuing  of  magazines,  periodicals,  and 
books ;  advertising  and  publicity,  the  spreading  of  informa- 
tion for  specific  purposes. 

In  journalism,  the  workers  are  reporters,  who  collect 
news  at  the  source;  copy  writers,  who  put  material  turned 
in  into  shape  for  publication ;  feature  writers,  who  do  work 
on  special  subjects  or  for  special  departments,  such  as  the 
financial,  sporting,  or  women's  pages ;  and  editors  of  various 
kinds,  who  direct  policies,  select  material,  and  interpret 
the  news  in  editorial  articles.  There  are  also  space  writers 
or  free-lance  journalists,  who  are  not  salaried  workers 
on  the  staff  of  any  one  paper  but  sell  their  work  at  so 
much  a  column  or  so  much  a  hundred  words  to  various 
papers  or  to  newspaper  syndicates,  especially  for  "feature" 
departments  or  for  Sunday  magazine  sections. 

The  main  types  of  newspaper  are  the  metropolitan  and 
large  city  daily  paper,  the  small  city  daily,  and  the  country 
or  small  town  weekly.  Like  all  periodicals  they  are  required 
by  law  to  state  their  owners  and  publishers.  They  represent 
all  sorts  of  political,  economic,  and   religious   views;  but 


284       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

their  chief  object  and  obligation  are  to  report  the  news  as 
fully  and  fairly  as  possible.  A  metropolitan  daily  of  the 
first  class  ^  has  editorial,  news,  mechanical,  and  business 
departments,  each  in  charge  of  a  chief  with  a  staff  of  edi- 
tors, managers,  or  foremen,  and  with  a  swarm  of  subordi- 
nates, reporters,  special  writers,  correspondents,  solicitors, 
clerks,  skilled  workmen,  as  the  department  requires.  The 
editorial  staff  usually  includes  the  editor-in-chief,  the  man- 
aging editor,  the  city  editor,  who  has  charge  of  securing 
news  from  a  radius  of  from  twenty-five  to  seventy-five 
miles ;  the  telegraph  editor,  the  foreign  editor,  the  night 
editor,  and  various  assistants.  The  Sunday  edition  of  the 
paper  frequently  has  a  separate  staff,  and  combines  many 
aspects  of  magazine  publishing  with  journalism  proper.  In 
1 91 8,  there  were  some  23,000  newspapers  and  periodicals 
pubhshed  in  the  United  States  and  its  insular  possessions ; 
in  1914,  there  were  794  daily  papers  in  large  cities;  1,786  in 
small. 

By  far  the  largest  number  of  journalists  begin  as  re- 
porters ;  and  reporters  are  the  most  numerous  class  of 
journalistic  workers.  Upon  them  falls  "the  chief  burden 
of  the  trade,"  and  they  must  possess  above  all  "a  heaven- 
born  quality  called  'the  nose  for  news.'  "  Says  Mr.  Seitz : 
"Under  present-day  workings,  the  writing  side  is  the  least 
of  the  newspaper's  troubles.  Re-write  men  and  trained 
copy  readers  shape  up  the  stuff.  The  problem  is  to  get  it. 
That  is  the  reporter's  job."  This  may  be  a  hard  saying 
for  the  college  graduate  and  other  young  persons  with 
a  pretty  talent  for  writing.  But  schools  and  depart- 
ments of  journalism  as  well  as  newspapers  are  insisting 
upon  the  fact  that  to  be  able  to  write  does  not  of  itself 
make  a  young  man  nor  a  young  woman  a  journalist,  desir- 
able as  it  is  as  an  asset.  The  true  reporter  must  have  a  thirst 
for  experiences,  however  raw  and  trivial  and  inconsequent 
they  may  seem  to  be.  He  must  seize  upon  the  salient,  and 
at  the  same  time  not  warp  the  essential  facts.  He  must  be 
ready  to  live  under  orders,  to  jump  from  one  thing  to 
another  as  if  he  were  catching  a  train,  to  admit  no  fatigue 

*  See  Don  C.  Seitz.  Training  for  the  Newspaper  Trade.  Chart 
of  Newspaper  Administration. 


INFORMATION  SERVICES  285 

and  nO'  discouragement.  If  he  is  a  good  reporter,  he  will 
have  gained  a  cross-section  and  panoramic  view  of  life 
that  will  stand  him  in  good  stead,  whether  he  remain  in 
the  profession  of  journalism  or  not.  On  the  other  hand, 
experience  as  a  newspaper  reporter  has  its  disadvantages, 
reflected  in  what  is  termed  the  journalistic  type  of  mind — 
the  mind  that  sees  everything  as  a  "story,"  that  has  little 
patience  with  more  sober  details  and  little  consecutiveness. 
To  quote  Mr.  Seitz  again :  "A  reporter  succeeds  from  the 
outset.  He  'makes  good'  or  fails  promptly.  His  is  not 
the  experience  of  the  young  lawyer,  doctor,  or  business 
man,  slowly  picking  up  his  load.  .  .  .  Being  a  reporter  is 
eminently  a  young  man's  job.  He  is  always  on  assign- 
ments. .  .  .  He  must  ever  be  alert  and  at  the  command  of 
the  relentless  'desk.'  ...  He  has  no  hours,  but  must  be 
ready  on  call.  ...  He  must  learn  to  write  accurately  and 
to  think  ahead  of  his  pen.  .  .  .  The  making  of  valuable  ac- 
quaintances is  an  important  factor.  It  has  led  to  the  gradu- 
ating of  many  reporters  into  other  lines  of  success.  There 
is  always  a  chance  for  promotion  outside  of  the  profession, 
if  the  inside  fails  to  open  up." 

Clearly  the  life  of  a  "straight  reporter"  is  not  an  easy 
one  for  a  young  woman,  however  well  qualified  she  may 
be;  and  she  still  sufifers  from  certain  disabilities,  notably 
in  the  matter  of  acquaintance  just  spoken  of.  But  to  the 
right  type,  the  difficulties  act  as  a  challenge  rather  than 
as  a  deterrent;  and  there  is  no  reason  why  she  should  not 
be  a  reporter  if  she  has  had  sound  training  and  advice,  is 
prepared  for  hard  work,  physically,  mentally,  and  morally, 
and  is  not  too  spendthrift  of  her  energies.  On  some  papers 
the  practice  persists  of  giving  women  society,  club,  and 
lecture  assignments,  or  other  supposedly  easy  and  lady-like 
work.  But  the  best  training  is  to  be  found  on  papers  which 
send  out  reporters  on  the  assignments  for  which  they  are 
best  fitted,  or  for  which  they  happen  to  be  available. 

Reporting  is  essentially  an  apprenticeship  for  other  po- 
sitions on  a  newspaper  in  the  department  for  which  the 
individual  shows  special  aptitude.  It  also  leads  to  work 
on  magazines  of  various  kinds,  on  trade  journals  and  "house 
organs,"   to  advertising  and  publicity  work,  and,   of   late 


286       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

years,  to  work  on  certain  sides  of  the  motion-picture  busi- 
ness. 

Editorial  positions  for  both  men  and  women  are  far 
more  limited  in  number  and  more  difficult  to  obtain  than 
are  positions  as  reporters.  But  newspapers  are  on  the  look- 
out for  reporters  who  show  signs  of  possessing  the  "edi- 
torial sense,"  the  ability  to  interpret  and  evaluate  news  and 
to  present  it  effectively  to  the  public.  There  are  many 
kinds  of  assistantship  in  which  they  may  be  "tried  out." 
But  most  minor  editorial  positions  on  a  newspaper  have 
as  little  to  do  with  literature  as  has  reporting,  and  are 
concerned  almost  wholly  with  selecting,  "cutting"  and  other- 
wise editing  reporters'  "stories"  and  other  "copy"  and  with 
supervising  assignments.  Such  work,  however,  gives  a 
valuable  insight  into  the  composition  and  operation  of  a 
great  newspaper.  It  is  usually  a  long  road  to  appearance 
on  the  editorial  page,  except  as  everything  on  a  paper  moves 
quickly ;  but  exceptional  ability  is  likely  to  win  prompter 
recognition  than  in  many  other  fields.  It  is  said  that  to  be 
of  editorial  "timber"  a  person  must  have  a  specialty,  a 
hobby,  about  which  he  knows  everything.  A  modern  edi- 
torial worker  needs  a  solid  grounding  in  economics  and  poli- 
tics on  both  the  theoretical  and  practical  sides,  a  strong 
sense  of  the  public  obligations  of  the  press,  and  a  keen 
insight  with  respect  to  his  particular  public. 

A  field  of  journalism  to  which  both  recent  writers  and 
the  schools  of  journalism  call  attention  is  that  of  the  coun- 
try or  small  town  newspaper,  usually  a  weekly.  Here  the 
young  man  or  the  young  woman  of  education  and  intelli- 
gence with  a  lively  interest  in  country  people  and  country 
life  and  its  problems,  may  learn  at  first  hand  the  essentials 
of  the  newspaper  business,  may  be  a  respected  and  im- 
portant member  of  the  community,  and  may  earn  an  income 
which,  though  moderate,  will  yield  larger  returns  in  com- 
fort and  human  satisfactions  than  a  better  income  in  the 
city.  In  journalism,  as  in  banking,  there  are  many  advan- 
tages accruing  from  the  all-around  training  furnished  by 
serving  an  apprenticeship  in  a  small  place.  Too  many  be- 
ginners look  only  to  the  overcrowded  and  specialized  field 
of  urban  journalism.     To  buy  a   country  newspaper  of 


INFORMATION  SERVICES  287 

course  requires  some  capital,  although  the  price  is  often 
low;  and  it  is  not  advisable  to  make  such  an  investment 
without  some  newspaper  experience  on  a  salaried  basis  or 
at  least  a  full  course  in  journalism  with  special  attention 
to  country  conditions.  But  a  number  of  young  men  and 
a  few  young  women  of  a  high  type  have  been  investing  in 
these  properties  with  the  determination  to  put  the  best  of 
themselves  and  their  education  into  them.  Many  country 
papers  are  down  at  the  heels  and  small-minded  affairs,  car- 
ried on  according  to  an  outworn  pattern.  With  the  fran- 
chise and  an  understanding  of  the  new  movements  in  rural 
health,  education,  and  living  conditions,  two  young  college 
women,  let  us  say,  might  buy  and  run  such  a  paper  in 
a  way  that  would  be  rich  in  returns  to  themselves  and  the 
community.  There  are  many  possibilities  of  cooperation 
with  county  farm-bureaus,  schools,  granges,  churches,  health 
authorities,  Boy  and  Girl  Scout  organizations,  and  so  on 
Both  the  Federal  Public  Health  Service  and  the  American 
Red  Cross  have  extensive  rural  health  programs,  which  a 
country  newspaper  could  do  much  to  furtlier.  A  major 
American  problem  is  the  improvement  of  the  rural  school. 
Until  about  ten  years  ago,  training  in  journalism  was 
secured  by  the  method  of  practical  experience,  through  be- 
ginning as  a  "cub  reporter"  on  some  city  daily,  as  handy- 
man or  even  "printer's  devil"  on  some  country  weekly. 
Natural  aptitude  and  the  lure  of  the  work  for  the  young 
and  adventurous  have  played  a  greater  part  in  drawing  peo- 
ple into  journalism  than  college  education  and  schools  of 
journalism.  Even  to-day  there  are  those  who  hold  that 
the  newspaper  is  the  only  really  effective  school.  But  ex- 
perienced journalists  have  long  felt  this  to  be  a  wasteful 
and  hit  or  miss  method,  and  have  advocated  organized 
preparation  comparable  to  that  in  law  or  medicine,  with 
properly  supervised  practice,  holding  that  the  public  in- 
fluence of  the  modern  newspaper  is  too  great  to  be  as- 
sumed without  a  comprehensive  knowledge  of  its  standards, 
problems,  and  procedures.  The  Pulitzer  School  of  Journal- 
ism of  Columbia  University  was  endowed  as  long  ago  as 
1904  by  a  great  New  York  editor  and  publisher  who  wrote 
of  it :    "In  all  my  planning  the  chief  end  I  had  in  view  was 


288       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

the  welfare  of  the  RepubHc."  The  Missouri  Press  Asso- 
ciation had  long  urged  the  establishment  of  the  University 
of  Missouri  School  of  Journalism,  which  was  opened  in 
1908,  and  was  the  first  fully  organized  school.  New  York 
University,  the  University  of  Washington,  the  University 
of  Wisconsin,  and  the  University  of  Indiana  also  have  im- 
portant schools  or  departments ;  and  many  other  universi- 
ties and  colleges  give  instruction  in  journalism  of  a  pre- 
professional  or  professional  character.  Some  of  the  state 
institutions  have  special  courses  in  agricultural  journaHsm 
or  in  the  country  weekly,  and  offer  short  courses  and  "news- 
paper weeks"  to  the  journalists  of  the  state,  quite  as  the 
agricultural  colleges  do  to  the  farmers.  They  issue  valu- 
able bulletins  on  journalistic  topics.^  Academic  training  in 
journalism  ranges  from  single  elective  courses  in  newspaper 
writing  to  four-year  undergraduate  courses  and  provisions 
for  graduate  work.  In  most  schools  of  journaHsm,  the  first 
two  years  are  devoted  to  academic  work  of  a  cultural  char- 
acter; the  last  two  years  to  technical  courses  and  to  ad- 
vanced training  in  economics,  politics,  history,  sociology,  and 
literature.  The  Pulitzer  School  of  Journalism  offers  a 
course  covering  the  last  two  years  of  the  undergraduate 
curriculum,  and  admits  graduates  of  other  colleges  to  its 
second  year,  if  they  have  had  work  equivalent  to  that  of 
the  first.  It  provides  three  traveling  foreign  scholarships 
of  the  value  of  $1,500  each  to  its  graduates. 

Modern  journalism  makes  so  many  demands  upon  its 
practitioners  that  it  is  difficult  to  suggest  undergraduate 
courses  of  special  pre-professional  value.  In  addition  to 
those  just  mentioned,  psychology  in  its  various  applications 
is  of  fundamental  importance,  as  is  also  anthropology  for 
the  light  which  it  throws  on  racial  "folkways."  Enough 
experimental  science  should  be  taken  to  make  clear  its  rela- 
tions to  modern  problems  and  techniques  and  to  give  re- 
spect for  scientific  methods  and  rigorous  standards  of  fact 
and  truth.  At  the  University  of  California  a  faculty  "com- 
mittee on  journalistic  studies"  representing  several  depart- 

*  See  James  Melvin  Lee.  Instruction  in  J ournalism.  U.  S.  Bu- 
reau of  Education.  1918.  Bulletin  No.  2\.  Burges  Johnson.  "Lit- 
erary Work,"  Journalism,  Advertising   (1919). 


INFORMATION  SERVICES  289 

ments  was  established  in  1919  to  advise  students  looking 
forward  to  journalism  as  a  career  and  to  offer  certain  joint 
courses. 

Positions  on  newspapers  are  largely  secured  through  rec- 
ommendation or  direct  application  with  specimens  of  work. 
A  young  woman  may  often  sell  some  of  her  work  to  a 
"feature"  department  before  receiving  a  regular  appoint- 
ment to  the  staff.  Helpful  suggestions  and  advice  from 
prominent  journalists  are  given  in  a  recent  Oberlin  College 
bulletin.^ 

Salaries  in  reportorial  work  are  low  to  begin  with ;  but 
advancement  comes  quickly,  if  at  all.  The  initial  salary 
must  be  looked  upon  as  an  apprentice  wage,  giving  the  op- 
portunity for  invaluable  practical  training.  But  if  it  is 
below  the  current  cost  of  living,  the  newspaper,  on  its 
part,  should  recognize  its  obligation  to  furnish  instruction, 
at  least  to  the  extent  of  "routing"  the  beginner  through 
the  various  departments.  In  the  rush  of  newspaper  work, 
novices  are  usually  left  to  sink  or  swim.  Professor  James 
Melvin  Lee  gives  the  following  report  on  salaries  within 
his  personal  knowledge  on  papers  outside  the  metropolitan 
districts.  They  were  presumably  received  in  19 18  by  stu- 
dents of  schools  of  journalism.  "In  the  case  of  one  hun- 
dred reporters  who  recently  secured  positions  .  .  .  ten  were 
hired  at  a  salary  of  $18  per  week;  thirty-eight  at  $20; 
twenty-six  at  $25 ;  twenty-two  at  $30;  and  four  at  $35.  .  .  . 
In  the  case  of  a  dozen  city  editors  who  were  hired  during 
the  same  period,  two  secured  $30;  four  $35  ;  four  $40;  and 
two  about  $50  a  week.  The  last  figure  quoted  is  about  the 
average  weekly  salary  of  the  managing  editor  of  the  daily 
published  outside  the  larger  cities.  Such  a  managing  edi- 
tor often  has  charge  of  the  editorial  page  in  addition  to 
his  other  duties." 

During  191 9  "newspaper  writers'  unions"  affiliated  with 
the  American  Federation  of  Labor  were  formed  in  various 
cities.  The  Ncnv  Republic  ^  states  that  such  a  union  in  Bos- 
ton increased  the  average  newspaper  salary   from   $21   a 

*  Vocational  /Advice  for  College  Students  (1918).    See  also  Voca- 
tions for  Business  and  Professional  Women  (1919). 
'August  6,  1919. 


290       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

week  to  a  minimum  of  $38  for  reporters  and  $45  for  desk 
men.  Four  city  editors  are  members.  In  Rochester  the 
union  demanded  $50  a  week  for  experienced  reporters. 
In  New  Haven,  where  demands  were  not  granted,  the  news- 
paper men  established  a  cooperative  daily.  Seattle  has  for 
some  time  had  a  daily,  the  Union  Record,  backed  by  organ- 
ized labor.  Papers  under  cooperative  and  labor  auspices 
are  likely  to  increase  in  number. 

Five  women  filling  our  schedules  in  1918  and  employed 
by  one  middle-western  and  four  eastern  newspapers  as  re- 
porters, feature  writers,  and  sub-editors  received  salaries 
ranging  from  $15  to  $35  a  week,  from  $790  to  $1,820  a  year, 
with  a  median  salary  of  $25  a  week  or  $1,300  a  year.  One 
receiving  $25  had  begun  at  $10  eighteen  months  before;  an- 
other with  considerable  previous  experience  had  begun  at 
$25  seventeen  months  before.  Only  one  is  a  college  gradu- 
ate; the  others  are  graduates  of  high  or  private  schools. 
One  has  taken  short  courses  in  journalism  and  advertising 
at  a  neighboring  university;  two  have  had  courses  at  busi- 
ness schools.  Two  have  been  on  other  papers ;  one  l^as 
taught ;  one  has  been  a  secretary ;  one  a  hospital  social 
worker;  one  a  librarian  and  traveling  salesman.  None  of 
thern  is  over  thirty-five.  Their  work  includes  regular  re- 
porting with  special  reference  to  community  activities  in 
which  women  are  concerned ;  special  articles  on  women  and 
children;  theater  assignments;  in  one  case  writing  the  en- 
tire women's  page;  in  the  case  of  the  sub-editor,  writing 
special  signed  articles. 

Advice  and  comments  are  as  follows:  "Don't  gossip. 
Don't  allow  yourself  to  grow  stale.  I  should  have  mas- 
tered more  modern  languages,  and  should  have  studied 
government  and  economics." 

"It  is  a  wonderful  training  for  anyone.  I  should  advise 
determination,  courage,  a  good  grasp  of  'talking  English,' 
a  knowledge  of  typewriting  sufficient  to  do  'copy'  fairly 
quickly.  College  education  or  shorthand  are  not  necessary. 
Get  out  before  you  become  hardened  or  cynical.  Use  it  as 
a  road  to  something  better." 

"If  I  had  known  that  I  was  going  to  do  newspaper  work, 
I  should  have  taken  more  intensive  English  training,  and 


INFORMATION  SERVICES  291 

read  all  that  could  have  been  crammed  in — novels,  poetr}', 
history,  everything  written  in  books." 

"I  do  not  advise  newspaper  work  for  the  average  woman. 
The  work  is  hard,  and  the  hours  are  not  steady  but  leave 
you  no  leisure  that  you  can  depend  on.  There  are  about 
twenty  men  on  this  paper  doing  work  comparable  to  mine. 
Their  average  salary  is  not  so  high.  The  really  experi- 
enced newswriter,  if  a  woman,  is  rather  better  paid  than 
a  man.  On  this  paper  men  and  women  are  frequently  paid 
a  bonus  for  an  especially  original  idea." 

"Do  not  enter  the  work  unless  you  have  a  'nose  for  news' 
and  love  it.  Work  at  knowing  people,  and  be  with  the  pub- 
lic as  much  as  possible.  In  newspaper  work,  if  one  makes 
good,  there  is  practically  no  sum  which  men  and  women 
alike  cannot  earn  by  working.  ...  I  am  the  only  woman 
on  the  reportorial  staff  with  eight  men,  and  I  require  no 
extras  of  any  kind." 

"The  only  method  that  I  know  of  to  secure  a  position 
on  a  paper  is  to  ask  for  it." 

"Show  the  sort  of  work  you  can  do  by  bringing  in  a  good 
story  on  some  up  to  the  minute  activity.  If  an  editor  is 
familiar  with  the  sort  of  work  a  writer  does  on  some  other 
paper,  it  helps.    Keep  after  him ! !" 

Probably  more  women,  especially  among  college  gradu- 
ates, are  attracted  to  the  magazine  field  than  to  the  field  of 
newspaper  work  proper.  Some  of  them'  begin  as  journalists, 
and  come  over  into  magazine  work  through  feature  writing 
or  through  contributions  to  magazines.  Others,  however, 
enter  magazine  work  directly.  There  is  a  difference  of 
opinion  as  to  the  value  of  previous  newspaper  experience. 
As  many  women  go  into  advertising,  publicity,  and  motion- 
picture  work  from  the  newspaper  as  go  into  magazine  work. 

The  range  of  magazines  and  periodicals  of  various  kinds 
is  enormous  and  constantly  growing,  from  the  weeklies  con- 
taining summaries  of  the  news  and  comments  upon  it,  thus 
touching  the  newspaper,  through  the  "journals  of  opin- 
ion," the  "literary"  and  "popular"  monthlies,  the  "women's" 
and    "household"    magazines,    the    garden    magazines,    to 


292        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

periodicals  for  every  group  and  occupation, — agricultural 
and  farm,  motion-picture,  musical,  art,  scientific,  profes- 
sional, technical,  and  trade.  The  number  and  importance 
of  trade  journals  are  little  recognized;  but  they  run  into 
the  hundreds,  and  have  a  wide  circulation.  Over  three  hun- 
dred, including  dailies,  weeklies,  and  monthlies,  are  pub- 
lished in  New  York  City  alone.  Some  of  them,  like  Print- 
ers' Ink,  the  Iron  Age,  Women's  Wear,  the  Publishers' 
Weekly,  are  nationally  influential.  These  publications  pay 
good  salaries,  and  are  on  the  lookout  for  people  who  com- 
bine a  good  general  education,  newspaper  or  magazine  ex- 
perience, and  at  least  a  preliminary  knowledge  of  the  par- 
ticular industry  or  trade  concerned.  More  intimate 
knowledge  can  be  acquired  in  service,  possibly  through  work 
as  an  operative,  or  in  some  other  department  of  the  busi- 
ness. Trade  journals  often  require  statisticians  and  other 
technical    workers. 

Another  type  of  trade  periodical  is  known  as  a  "house 
organ,"  published  by  an  individual  firm  or  corporation  for 
its  employees  and  sometimes  with  their  help,  to  give  all 
members  of  the  personnel  information  regarding  the  or- 
ganization as  a  whole  and  to  develop  general  interest,  good 
feeling,  and  "morale."  ^  "House  organs"  have  increased 
rapidly  in  number  during  the  past  few  years,  and  are  prop- 
erly part  of  the  personnel  work  of  an  organization.  Some 
of  the  most  successful  have  been  edited  by  women.  W^here 
they  are  wholly  in  the  hands  of  the  management,  they  are 
not  infrequently  used  as  a  means  of  influencing  the  minds 
of  the  workers  with  regard  to  political,  economic,  and  so- 
cial questions.  Of  late,  some  of  them  have  contained  ex- 
ceedingly obvious  reactionary  propaganda.  In  taking  a 
position  on  either  a  trade  journal  or  a  house  organ,  a  pro- 
fessional woman  should  inform  herself  with  regard  to 
the  views  and  policies  of  the  industry  or  the  firm.  There 
is  little  satisfaction  in  attempting  journalistic  or  editorial 
work  on  a  publication  with  which  one  is  fundamentally  out 
of  sympathy. 

The  largest  number  of  women  editors  and  editorial 
writers  are  employed  on  the  great  "women's  magazines," 

*See  Robert  E.  Ramsey.     Effective  House  Organs  (1920). 


INFORMATION  SERVICES  293 

some  of  which  have  millions  of  subscribers,  and  carry  an 
enormous  amount  of  advertising.  In  a  few  cases,  the  edi- 
tors in  chief  are  women.  While  it  has  been  the  fashion 
to  smile  at  these  magazines,  and  while  they  still  contain 
much  that  is  trivial,  and  also  tend  to  set  up  false  standards 
of  living,  they  are  becoming  increasingly  aware  of  certain 
public  questions  with  which  women  are  closely  concerned, 
and  are  carrying  on  campaigns  of  educational  propaganda 
in  connection  with  public  health,  child-welfare,  education, 
food,  occupations,  and  so  on.  They  afford  a  great  popular 
medium  for  the  dissemination  of  these  and  other  construc- 
tive ideas.  It  would  be  interesting  to  see  what  would  happen 
to  their  advertising  if  they  undertook  to  push  the  coopera- 
tive movement,  for  instance.  They  often  employ  women 
professional  experts  to  deal  with  the  matters  which  they 
are  actively  furthering,  and  commonly  pay  salaries  well 
above  the  average. 

Eleven  women  on  magazines  and  periodicals  who  filled 
our  schedules  in  1918  received  salaries  ranging  from  $1,040 
to  $10,000,  with  a  median  salary  of  about  $2,000.  The  next 
to  the  highest  salary  was  only  $2,600.  They  include  the  edi- 
tor in  chief  of  a  popular  women's  magazine,  the  editors  of 
a  denominational  religious  monthly  and  a  "naval  monthly," 
the  office  editor  of  a  well-known  general  weekly,  the  asso- 
ciate editor  of  a  journal  of  electricity,  the  assistant  editor 
of  a  tax  association  monthly,  the  editor  of  a  "women  in 
business"  department  of  an  "efficiency''  magazine;  the  edi- 
tor of  a  "girls'  page"  in  a  leading  magazine  for  young 
people.  One  woman  is  editor  and  publication  manager 
of  a  technical  journal  of  the  popular  type;  another  is 
owner  and  editor  of  a  monthly  publication  for  teachers ; 
another  is  circulation  manager  of  a  leading  weekly  devoted 
to  social  and  civic  betterment.  Eight  of  these  women  are 
college  graduates,  four  of  eastern  and  four  of  western  in- 
stitutions. Five  have  left  college  since  1912.  One  has  taken 
courses  in  the  school  of  journalism  of  a  western  state  uni- 
versity; two  have  been  on  newspapers,  one  having  been 
city  editor  for  two  years ;  four  have  been  promoted  from 
subordinate  positions  on  the  same  magazine ;  one  has  been 
a  trained  librarian  and  organizer  of  business  libraries;  one 


294        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

a  trained  secretary  and  statistician ;  one  a  social  and  indus- 
trial investigator. 

The  editorial  work  of  these  women  involves  selecting  and 
editing  articles,  providing  illustrations,  planning  the  make- 
up of  each  issue  and  the  "lay-out"  of  pages,  pasting  the 
"dummy" ;  sometimes  selecting  the  cover,  proof-rea'ding, 
writing  special  articles  and  news  notes.  In  some  cases,  they 
also  have  charge  of  advertising  or  manufacturing,  attend- 
ing to  all  matters  of  buying  paper,  printing,  and  so  forth. 
The  circulation  manager  is  in  the  business  department. 

An  editor  of  long  experience  says :  "Learn  to  do  some 
special  thing  well.  Get  a  definite  idea  of  what  you  can 
offer  that  will  be  of  value  to  the  concern.  Most  applicants, 
especially  college  women,  merely  state  that  they  'want  to 
work  on  a  magazine,'  but  have  nothing  special  to  offer." 

A  successful  young  college  woman  says :  "Less  high- 
school  methods  in  freshman  courses  in  college  would  have 
been  desirable  and  more  stimulus  to  broaden  my  interests ; 
throughout  college  a  definite  emphasis  of  the  connection  be- 
tween college  work  and  the  activities  of  the  world  outside. 
...  I  took  the  place  of  a  man  and  at  the  same  salary.  ,  .  . 
Sometimes  one  can  get  on  the  editorial  staff  of  a  magazine 
by  writing  articles  for  it.  Usually,  I  think,  the  thing  to  do 
is  to  go  and  ask  for  a  job,  bringing  introductions  and  recom- 
mendations if  possible  and  presenting  one's  own  qualifi- 
cations." 

Another  who  is  associate  editor  of  a  technical  journal 
says:  "The  ability  to  understand  and  form  judgments  on 
scientific  subjects  is  of  more  use  than  actual  technical  train- 
ing. College  editorial  work  is  of  use  in  securing  a  po- 
sition, although  this  side  can  be  easily  picked  up.  'Loyalty 
to  the  paper'  and  enthusiasm  in  the  work  are  most  important 
in  the  eyes  of  the  employer.  Stenography  and  typewriting 
are  of  no  value  in  this  work.  My  association  with  my 
father,  who  is  an  engineer,  and  work  on  engineering  books 
written  by  him  have  been  most  helpful;  also  my  interest  in 
mathematics,  science,  philosophy,  economics,  and  English, 
and  acquaintance  with  employers  and  women  through  vo- 
cational work  done  for  the  Association  of  Collegiate 
Alumnae.  .  .  .  On  a  technical  journal  a  woman  is  not  worth 


INFORMATION  SERVICES  295 

quite  so  much  as  a  man  (other  things  being  equal)  because 
she  cannot  join  technical  societies  and  keep  in  touch  with 
people  and  happenings.  Part  of  the  'good  will'  of  the  busi- 
ness is  dependent  upon  the  editor  being  good  friends  with 
everybody  ....  It  would  take  years  of  acquiring  acquaint- 
anceship in  technical  circles  before  a  woman  could  handle 
such  a  journal  independently." 

A  woman  who  has  been  a  superintendent  of  city  and 
state  training  schools  for  teachers  and  for  five  years  an 
elected  county  superintendent  of  schools  in  the  Southwest, 
owns  and  edits  a  teachers'  journal,  and  also  runs  a  ranch. 
She  says :  "I  edit  all  material  contributed,  write  book 
reviews,  solicit  and  arrange  all  advertising.  I  find  my 
broad  experience  in  educational  work  and  in  community 
work,  city  and  rural,  most  helpful." 


Opportunities  for  women  in  the  book  publishing  field  are 
more  limited  than  in  connection  with  either  newspapers 
or  magazines.  This  is  partly  because  publishing  houses 
are  themselves  relatively  few  in  number,  partly  because  until 
recently,  few  women  have  been  regularly  connected  with 
them  except  as  secretaries  to  executives  or  routine  clerks  and 
stenographers.  Some  of  the  best-known  firms  are  old  and 
conservative ;  in  practically  all  of  them  men  compose  the 
firm  and  direct  its  policies.  The  National  Board  of  Young 
Women's  Christian  Associations  has  its  Woman's  Press,  and 
a  bookshop  in  New  York  run  by  women  has  done  a  small 
amount  of  publishing.  In  the  larger  publishing  houses 
within  the  past  few  years,  a  number  of  young  college  women 
have  found  a  foothold,  not  through  stenography  and  typing, 
but  as  junior  assistants  on  the  same  basis  as  young  college 
men.  Two  of  them  are  now  heads  of  children's  depart- 
ments in  long  established  and  important  firms.  Other 
women  hold  responsible  posts  in  both  the  editorial  and  ad- 
vertising departments.  The  publishing  business,  like  others, 
is  beginning  to  establish  "research''  departments,  which  an- 
alyze sales,  study  population  distribution  and  interests,  and 
in  other  ways  seek  to  apply  the  principles  of  scientific  man- 
agement and  cost  accounting  to  an  industry  in  which  the 


296        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

margin  of  profits  is  at  best  small  and  uncertain.^  It  offers 
therefore  some  opportunities  to  women  with  training  along 
these  lines.    It  is  undertaking  more  systematic  advertising." 

For  the  young  woman  who  has  cast  aside  the  fond  belief 
that  to  secure  a  position  with  a  publishing  house  means 
entering  upon  a  literary  career,  but  who  has  a  keen  in- 
terest in  the  making  and  marketing  of  books  as  well  as 
in  their  contents  and  a  lively  curiosity  about  the  reading 
habits  of  the  public,  there  are  at  present  genuine  oppor- 
tunities in  the  book  publishing  field,  although  she  will  have 
to  make  them  to  a  large  extent.  She  must  expect  to  begin 
at  the  bottom,  but  if  she  shows  a  capacity  for  hard  and 
intelligent  work,  an  unwillingness  to  receive  special  favors, 
and  a  fresh  and  resourceful  mind,  promotion  will  not  be 
slow.  With  women  forming  so  large  a  portion  of  the  read- 
ing public,  there  is  a  real  chance  to  help  toward  a  better 
understanding  of  the  reading  requirements  of  different 
groups  of  women.  It  is  too  often  assumed  that  they  are 
predominantly  a  leisure  and  "consuming"  element  in  the 
population.  Unless  she  is  of  the  secretarial  type  of  mind, 
she  need  no  longer  use  that  mode  of  access  to  the  occupa- 
tion. And  she  should  clearly  realize  that  nobody  begins  as 
a  "reader"  or  book  reviewer.  These  kinds  of  work  are  usu- 
ally done  on  a  "piec'e-work"  basis  by  experienced  profes- 
sional persons.  They  are  among  the  crumbs  that  commonly 
fall  to  college  professors,  or  are  entrusted  to  expert  con- 
sultants or  members  of  the  firm.  Women  might  well  go 
more  largely  into  the  selling  end  of  the  book  business,  which 
is  invaluable  as  training  for  its  other  aspects.  As  a  business, 
its  surroundings  and  associations  are  unusually  agreeable, 
its  subject-matter  and  problems  of  varied  and  challenging 
human  significance. 

The  main  divisions  of  book-publishing  are  general  pub- 
lishing, educational  or  text-book  publishing,  religious  pub- 
lishing, and  technical  publishing.  Some  firms  have  all  these 
departments.     Within  these  fields  publishers  specialize  in 

^  See  George  P.  Brett.  Making  of  Many  Books.  Atlantic 
Monthly,  October,   1920. 

'  See  A.  Edward  Newton.  A  Slogan  for  Booksellers  in  the  same 
issue. 


INFORMATION  SERVICES  297 

many  ways,  so  that  one  comes  to  know  the  general  character 
of  books  bearing  certain  imprints.  So  far,  there  has  been 
no  special  form  of  training  for  publishing-house  work  other 
than  a  liberal  education  and  actual  experience  in  service. 
But  it  seems  high  time  for  publishers  to  put  their  heads  to- 
gether and  devise  some  sort  of  cooperative  courses  with 
neighboring  universities  rather  than  to  leave  the  equipment 
of  their  personnel  on  the  old-fashioned  basis  of  "picking 
up  a  trade."  Employment,  save  as  secretaries,  is  still  most 
frequently  secured  through  direct  application  backed  by  in- 
troductions and  recommendations. 

Ten  publishers  filled  our  schedules  in  1919,  including  one 
general  book  publisher,  one  general  magazine  publisher,  one 
publisher  of  business  and  educational  journals,  one  of  in- 
dexes, catalogues,  and  handbooks,  two  publishers  of  edu- 
cational books,  two  of  religious  books,  two  of  trade  books 
and  periodicals.  Three  employed  no  women  except  in  rou- 
tine clerical  work;  four  employed  them  as  office  managers, 
accountants,  and  secretaries  to  executives;  one  educational 
publisher  employed  them  as  salesmen,  and  had  a  woman 
assistant  manager  of  the  foreign  department ;  a  trade  pub- 
lisher had  a  woman  assistant  salesmanager ;  three  employed 
them  as  proofreaders;  one  employed  only  women  as  in- 
dexers  and  cataloguers ;  two  mention  editors.  Some  of  the 
largest  and  oldest  publishing  houses  made  no  reply.  The 
comments  range  from  paternal  solicitude  for  women  forced 
to  leave  their  proper  place,  the  home,  to  an  avowal  of  the 
belief  that  political  equality  will  bring  an  approach  to  eco- 
nomic equality  between  men  and  women.  Opinions  differ 
widelv  as  to  the  persistence  and  efficiency  of  women  in  the 
publishing  business.  "Men  are  much  more  persistent. 
Women  get  married  and  leave,  or  leave  anyhow." 

"Our  impression  is  that  women  are  fully  as  efficient  and 
persistent  as  men." 

"In  regard  to  the  relative  efficiency  of  men  and  women 
doing  similar  work,  we  have  reached  the  conclusion  that  it 
is  60-40  in  favor  of  men."  (This  is  written  over  an  origi- 
nal 50-50!) 

A  trade  publisher  says  that  he  wants  college  women 
"every  time."     An  educational  publisher  says  that  univer- 


298        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

sity  work  fits  better  for  business  than  brief  professional  or 
technical  courses. 

Many  publishers  are  also  retail  booksellers,  maintaining 
shops  for  the  purchase  of  their  own  publications  and  those 
of  other  firms.  This  allied  field  of  retail  bookselling  is  an 
attractive  and  promising  one  for  women,  especially  if  they 
have  had  previous  experience  in  a  publishing  house,  and 
thus  know  something  of  the  book  trade  from  the  inside. 
Women  are  successful  managers  of  large  book  departments 
in  department  stores.  One  in  Chicago  is  particularly  well 
known.  The  development  of  neighborhood  and  specialty 
bookshops — drama,  poetry,  children's,  and  so  on — provides 
an  opportunity  that  women  are  seizing.  If  business  sense 
and  professional  spirit  are  brought  to  such  enterprises,  no 
great  amount  of  capital  is  needed.  Examples  are  the  Gar- 
denside  Bookshop  in  Boston,  the  Wayfarers'  Bookshop  in 
Washington,  the  Priscilla  Guthrie  Bookshop  in  Pittsburgh, 
the  Sunwise  Turn  in  New  York.  The  proprietors  of  the 
latter  establishment  have  been  very  successful  in  the  heart 
of  the  hotel  and  terminal  district,  and  are  enthusiastic  over 
the  possibilities  of  the  neighborhood  bookshop  as  a  place 
where  people  may  drop  in  to  read  as  well  as  to  buy,  and 
where  an  expert  advisory  book  service  may  be  given,  such 
as  cannot  be  supplied  by  a  single  publisher  or  by  large 
firms.  They  would  like  to  see  women  opening  such  book- 
shops throughout  the  country.  There  is  a  chance  for  in- 
tensive study  of  a  neighborhood's  reading  needs ;  and  the 
small  bookshop  may  come  to  be  one  of  the  substitutes  for 
the  saloon !  On  the  other  hand,  the  idea  runs  contrary  to 
the  modern  spirit  of  consolidation,  and  the  pitfalls  that 
beset  the  retail  book  dealer  are  many.^  The  Bookshop  for 
Boys  and  Girls  of  the  Women's  Educational  and  Industrial 
Union  has  been  a  delightful  pioneer  enterprise,  which  has 
a  follower  in  the  Children's  Bookshop  in  New  York.  Talks 
to  parents  and  others  on  reading  for  and  about  children 
and  children's  story-hours  are  among  the  activities  of  these 
establishments.  During  the  summer  of  1920  the  Bookshop 
for  Boys  and  Girls  sent  a  motor  "book  caravan"  on  an  an- 

'  See  William  H.  Arnold.     The  Welfare  of  the  Bookstore.     At- 
lantic Monthly.     August,  1919. 


INFORMATION  SERVICES  299 

nounced  schedule  through  the  New  England  summer-resort 
country.^  A  Woman's  National  Book  Association  has  re- 
cently been  organized,  open  to  all  women  engaged  in  mak- 
ing, selling,  or  creating  a  book.^  A  few  women  of  experi- 
ence have  established  themselves  as  readers  and  as  au- 
thors' agents,  reading,  criticizing,  and  placing  manuscripts 
with  publishers.  Others  specialize  in  placing  plays,  and 
are  known  as  play  brokers. 


The  motion-picture  business  also  has  its  agents ;  and  in- 
dividual firms  are  employing  an  increasing  number  of  edu- 
cated women  in  work  allied  to  journalism  and  ad\\ertising. 
Young  college  women  commonly  begin  as  synopsis  writers, 
making  abstracts  of  stories  or  books  suitable  for  filming. 
This  is  apprentice  work,  and  does  not  pay  highly.  But 
it  gives  an  insight  into  the  requirements  of  a  good  motion- 
picture.  A  few  young  women  who  have  shown  aptitude 
have  become  "continuity  writers,"  which  means  preparing 
the  script  from  which  the  picture  is  actually  taken,  with 
detailed  instructions  for  every  stage  and  aspect.  This 
means  familiarity  with  the  production  studio.  Women  are 
also  acting  as  assistants  to  the  manager  of  the  editorial  de- 
partment, and  are  "title-writers"  and  reviewers  of  films. 
Much  title-writing,  however,  is  done  by  the  staff  as  a  group. 
There  is  a  difference  of  opinion  as  to  whether  authors  can 
satisfactorily  cooperate  in  the  making  of  scenarios  ^  from 
their  own  writings.  Most  producers  have  relegated  them 
to  the  background,  but  a  few  are  seeking  their  active  aid, 
even  in  continuity  writing.  There  is  a  demand  for  sce- 
narios of  more  literary  quality  than  is  usually  found  at 
present;  but  the  road  to  becoming  a  successful  writer  of 
scenarios  is  long  and  uncertain.     Three  universities,  Har- 

*  M^ary  Frank.  Caravaning  with  Books.  The  Bookman,  Feb- 
ruary, 1 92 1. 

'It  is  cooperating  (1921)  with  the  New  York  Booksellers'  League 
in  a  plan  for  courses  for  workers  in  bookselling  to  be  given  by 
New  York  University  and  the  New  York  Public  Librar>'. 

'  See  John  Emerson  and  Anita  Loos.  How  to  Write  Photo- 
Plays   (1920). 


300       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

vard,  Columbia/  and  the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  offer 
courses  in  scenario  and  other  motion-picture  writing.  A 
few  women  have  been  assistant  producers ;  fewer,  producers. 

The  rise  of  the  motion-picture  business  has  been  spec- 
tacular. It  is  estimated  that  it  is  now  the  fourth 
industry  in  the  United  States.  It  is  emerging  from  its 
"wild-cat"  stage  and  its  practically  exclusive  control  by 
theatrical  producers.  Its  significance  as  a  medium  of  com- 
munication as  well  as  of  recreation  and  its  tremendous  social 
appeal  both  for  good  and  ill  compel  the  serious  attention  of 
professional  workers.  The  efficacy  of  the  motion-picture 
as  a  medium  of  information  to  people  of  varied  social 
groups  and  speaking  different  languages  was  abundantly 
shown  during  the  war.  There  is  coming  to  be  a  clear  dis- 
tinction between  "commercial"  or  theatrical  films,  shown  in 
motion-picture  houses,  and  educational  and  informational 
films  supplied  directly  to  schools,  clubs,  churches,  factories, 
labor  unions,  prisons  and  reformatories,  and  so  on,  by  such 
agencies  as  the  Community  Motion  Picture  Bureau  and 
the  Educational  Film  Corporation.  A  new  Labor  Film 
Service  has  been  organized.  As  a  result  of  overseas  ex- 
perience in  war-time,  motion-picture  "camionettes"  are  be- 
ing sent  into  country  districts  to  provide  both  entertainment 
and  instruction,  reinforcing  the  work  of  the  States'  Re- 
lations and  Public  Health  Services,  the  American  Red  Cross, 
and  other  agencies  active  in  rural  betterment. 

In  addition  to  editorial,  production,  advertising,  and  cir- 
culating departments,  all  calling  for  expert  workers  of  vari- 
ous kinds,  motion-picture  companies  employ  research  work- 
ers in  connection  with  settings,  costumes,  and  the  like,  on 
a  salaried  or  piece-work  basis.  Competition  for  positions 
is  keen ;  and  professional  women  are  only  beginning  to  ap- 
pear in  the  work.  Salaries  for  those  who  succeed  are  high. 
Title-writers  are  said  to  receive  from  $ioo  to  $250  a  week ; 
continuity  writers  about  $750  a  month.  An  occupation  de- 
veloping with  such  rapidity  and  capable  of  so  many  appli- 
cations offers  much  that  is  of  interest  to  the  professionally- 
minded  woman,  and  may  provide  her  with  permanent  satis- 
factions.    (See  Chapter  XVI.) 

'See  Frances  Taylor  Patterson.    Cinema  Craftsmanship.     (1920.) 


IJANTA    BARBARA.    CAU.r 

INFORMATION  SERVTtES'        '"     301 

Advertising  is  an  activity  essential  to  modern  methods  of 
selling  commodities  and  services,  and  so  far  as  can  be  seen 
would  be  necessary  under  any  system  of  large-scale  pro- 
duction and  distribution.  It  has  emerged  from  a  "patent- 
medicine"  past,  and  is  reaching  the  point  where  every  ad- 
vertisement shall  be  a  "specification  of  the  character  and 
a  guaranty  of  the  quality"  of  what  is  sold.  Some  of  the 
great  advertising  companies  refuse  to  sign  contracts  until 
they  have  made  a  careful  investigation  of  the  nature  and 
usefulness  of  the  product  to  be  advertised.  They  stand 
back  of  their  facts,  and  are  beginning  to  develop  a  sense 
of  social  responsibility  about  "creating  a  market"  for  things 
that  are  superfluous  or  meretricious.  But  like  other  types 
of  commercial  enterprise,  advertising  is  as  yet  only  imper- 
fectly professionalized  in  the  full  sense ;  and  women  going 
into  it  need  to  be  sure  that  they  can  do  so  without  doing 
violence  to  their  social  and  ethical  standards.  It  is  highly 
important  to  know  beforehand  the  attitude  of  the  company 
with  which  they  are  identifying  themselves.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  is  estimated  that  eighty-five  per  cent  of  retail  buy- 
ing is  in  the  hands  of  women;  and  professional  women  in 
advertising  have  an  opportunity  to  study  this  consuming 
public  more  carefully  than  has  yet  been  done  and  to  di- 
rect it  more  wisely.  Many  firms  consider  that  it  is  essential 
to  employ  women  in  connection  with  the  advertising  of 
goods  appealing  particularly  to  women ;  but  women  are  not 
limiting  themselves  to  work  with  women. 

The  two  main  types  of  advertising  are  local  advertising, 
which  is  largely  retail,  and  national  advertising,  which  is 
largely  by  the  manufacturer,  producer,  or  wholesale  dis- 
tributer. Department  store  advertising  is  an  example  of 
the  first  type;  industrial  advertising  of  special  makes  or 
brands  of  articles  is  the  great  example  of  the  second  type. 
Financial  advertising,  theatrical  and  motion-picture  adver- 
tising, and  book  advertising  partake  of  the  nature  of  both. 
Retail  or  local  advertisers  practically  always  have  their  own 
advertising  departments ;  national  advertisers  are  more  likely 
to  employ  advertising  firms  or  agencies ;  many  business  or- 
ganizations make  use  of  both.  The  media  of  advertising 
are  many.     The  accepted  carriers  are  the  newspaper,  the 


302        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

magazine,  the  billboard  or  wall  sign,  the  booklet  or  circular, 
the  advertising  letter.  More  recent  are  the  electric  sign 
and  the  motion-picture.  Advertising  to  reach  manufac- 
turers and  large  distributers  is  found  chiefly  in  the  journals 
of  various  trades  and  industries.  The  automobile,  both  the 
pleasure  car  and  the  truck,  has  increased  the  importance  of 
outdoor  display  advertising.  Much  of  it  is  abhorrent  to 
the  lover  of  rural  or  urban  beauty ;  and  a  problem  in  civic 
art  is  that  of  improving  the  aesthetic  character  of  the  bill- 
board and  the  permanent  sign.  Some  of  the  war-time  ex- 
amples give  encouragement. 

Although  many  people  have  gone  into  advertising  from 
the  newspaper  or  magazine  field,  the  actual  writing  of  ad- 
vertising copy  is  only  one  part — and  perhaps  not  the  most 
important  part — of  the  modern  business  of  advertising. 
Especially  in  national  advertising,  campaigns  and  programs 
are  based  upon  the  most  careful  antecedent  investigation 
of  the  nature  of  the  article  to  be  advertised,  the  amount 
of  competition  to  be  met  in  selling  it,  the  distributions  of 
population,  the  special  groups  to  be  appealed  to,  the  best 
modes  of  approaching  them,  the  costs  and  profits.  All  these 
matters  have  been  reduced  to  a  scientific  basis,  expressed  in 
terms  of  statistics,  graphs  and  charts.  The  workers  re- 
quired must  be  trained  in  the  best  methods  of  commercial 
research,  applied  to  the  advertising  field.  They  need  large- 
mindedness  and  imagination  as  well  as  technical  training. 
There  is  a  chance  for  an  originality  which  is  not  sensational 
nor  eccentric.  Workers  are  prone  to  follow  certain  success- 
ful methods  in  a  sheeplike  way;  and  even  now  the  psychol- 
ogy of  different  buying  publics  is  imperfectly  understood. 

Advertising  workers  of  professional  character  are  of  four 
main  types:  (i)  Research  workers,  investigators,  statisti- 
cians, etc.  (2)  Managers  and  agents;  (3)  Copy-writers, 
designers,  and  illustrators.  (4)  Solicitors,  attached  to  pub- 
lications, who  sell  space  to  firms  wishing  to  advertise.  There 
are  also  "lay-out"  workers,  who  plan  the  arrangement  of 
advertising  matter  for  magazines,  newspapers,  bill-boards, 
and  so  on;  and  space-buyers,  who  must  know  the  adver-j 
tising  value  of  different  publications  and  their  space  rates. 
Some  experienced   women  have  become  advertising  con- 


INFORMATION  SERVICES  303 

sultants,  preparing  trade  catalogues,  circulars,  and  other 
matter.^ 

The  research  aspect  of ,  advertising  is  the  most  recently 
developed,  and  is  probably  the  most  directly  accessible  and 
the  most  rewarding  to  professional  women  with  training 
in  economics,  business  administration,  psychology,  or  some 
special  field  closely  related  to  the  commodities  advertised, 
such  as  foods  or  textiles.  Managerial  positions  are  reached 
through  securing  a  thorough  knowledge  of  the  business  by 
serving  in  one  or  other  of  the  subordinate  positions  and 
studying  it  in  all  its  ramifications.  Too  much  cannot  be 
known  of  the  product  or  products  advertised.  The  adver- 
tisements of  the  organization  and  of  others  should  be  criti- 
cally compared;  trade  journals  should  be  assiduously  read. 
Some  of  the  leading  women  advertising  managers  have 
reached  their  present  positions  through  becoming  connected 
with  the  company  as  stenographers ;  but  this  is  no  longer 
a  necessary  nor  in  most  cases  a  desirable  approach.  Some 
firms  are  taking  on  young  college  women  as  apprentices, 
and  giving  them  experience  on  different  sides  of  the  busi- 
ness. It  is  sometimes  well  to  begin  with  a  small  company  or 
agency  in  order  to  secure  this  "all-around"  training,  but 
on  the  whole,  the  larger  firms  have  the  better  organization 
and  procedures. 

Many  newspaper  women  have  gone  into  advertising,  and 
their  training  in  compression  and  in  writing  salient  head- 
lines has  been  of  value.  But  there  are  certain  ingrained 
newspaper  habits  which  work  against  success  in  advertising. 
The  advertisement  is  far  less  ephemeral  than  the  news- 
paper paragraph ;  it  appeals  to  a  specific  group  within  the 
vague  total  known  as  "the  public" ;  its  efficacy  is  constantly 
checked  by  the  correlations  of  expenditures  for  advertising 
and  receipts  from  sales ;  it  defeats  its  own  end  if  it  is  in- 
correct or  misleading.  The  rough  and  slapdash  methods 
of  the  reporter  will  not  do.  Experience  in  actual  salesman- 
ship either  behind  the  counter  or  "on  the  road"  is  consid- 
ered of  even  greater  value  as  training  for  the  advertising 
business ;  and  beginners  are  often  advised  to  serve  an  actual 

*  See  Eleanor  Gilbert.  The  Ambitious  IVotnan  in  Business  (1916), 
Chapter  13.    Advertising  and  the  Woman  Who  Can  Write. 


304        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

apprenticeship  as  salesmen.  They  should  at  least  be  fa- 
miliar with  the  modern  psychology  of  salesmanship  and 
advertising,  as  set  forth  in  such  books  as  those  of  Dr. 
Walter  Dill  Scott.  It  is  coming  to  be  recognized  also 
that  more  attention  should  be  paid  to  the  psychology 
and  ethics  of  buying,  the  attitude  of  the  actual  purchaser 
and  consumer. 

Advertising  companies  and  departments  usually  maintain 
a  small  art  force ;  but  much  of  the  actual  illustrating  and 
designing  is  done  on  a  piece-work  basis  by  "free-lance" 
workers.  It  is  important,  however,  for  all  advertising  work- 
ers, especially  copy  writers  and  "lay-out"  workers,  to  un- 
derstand the  principles  of  design  and  spatial  composition 
and,  if  possible,  to  have  some  knowledge  of  the  psychologi- 
cal principles  of  space  and  color  vision,  the  effect  of  dif- 
ferent forms  and  colors  at  varying  distances  and  varying 
speeds.^  To  study  advertisements  in  street-cars,  for  in- 
stance, is  to  realize  the  deplorable  lack  of  such  knowledge. 
Almost  equally  important  is  a  practical  knowledge  of  print- 
ing and  reproduction  processes,  styles  of  type,  and  so  on.  To 
secure  this,  it  is  often  desirable  to  attend  evening  classes 
in  printing  and  typography  or  even  one  of  the  "printers' 
schools,"  or  to  serve  a  while  at  the  printers'  trade. 

There  are  no  schools  of  advertising  of  university  grade, 
but  most  schools  of  commerce  and  business  administration 
give  courses  in  the  subject,  as  do  many  departments  of 
psychology.  At  least  one  great  national  advertising  com- 
pany has  its  own  training  course,  and  has  recently  arranged 
for  the  cooperation  of  a  leading  university.  Short  courses 
for  workers  are  given  by  extension  departments,  the  Young 
Men's  Christian  Associations,  and  business  institutes. 
Closely  allied  training  is  to  be  found  in  bureaus  or  depart- 
ments of  wholesale  and  retail  salesmanship  (see  p.  249). 
Positions  are  secured  through  direct  application,  or  through 
advertisement  in  such  trade  journals  as  Printers'  Ink  and 
Advertising  and  Selling.  Advice  as  to  firms  hospitable  to 
the  employment  of  women  may  be  secured  from  bureaus 
of  occupations  or  the  Bureau  of  Vocational  Information  in 

'See  E.  Sampson.     Advertise!   (1918).     Frank  Parsons.    Princi- 
ples of  Advertising  Arrangement   (1912). 


INFORMATION  SERVICES  305 

New  York.  Leagues  and  clubs  of  advertising  women  exist 
in  eleven  states;  and  women  are  admitted  to  some  of  the 
national  advertising  associations. 

Salaries  in  advertising  range  from  $20  a  week  for  be- 
ginners of  good  education  who  are  learning  the  business 
to  from  $25  to  $75  a  week  for  copy  writers;  from  $1,500  or 
$1,800  to  $3,000  or  $4,000  for  assistant  managers;  from 
$4,000  to  $10,000  or  more  for  managers.  Only  a  few  women 
have  reached  the  highest  managerial  salaries.  Research 
workers  receive  from  $1,500  for  subordinates  to  $5,000  or 
more  for  directors  of  departments.^  Six  women  filling  our 
schedules  in  1918  and  19 19  reported  salaries  ranging  only 
from  $1,020  to  $2,400  with  a  median  salary  of  $1,410.  Five 
are  college  graduates,  four  of  recent  classes.  Three  are 
assistant  advertising  managers  in  department  stores  in  New 
England,  the  south,  and  California ;  two  are  in  advertising 
agencies,  one  an  apprentice  and  one  the  secretary-treasurer 
of  the  company;  and  one  is  a  copy  writer  and  assistant 
to  the  advertising  manager  of  a  fuel  gas  company.  Five 
graduates  of  1917  and  1918  of  an  eastern  college  are  in  the 
advertising  departments  of  department  stores,  one  as  man- 
ager, and  in  the  research  departments  of  a  fashion  and 
pattern  company,  of  an  associated  drygoods  corporation, 
and  the  commercial  research  division  of  a  great  popular 
publishing  company  carrying  much  advertising. 

The  graduate  of  a  western  university  says:  "Our  store 
is  progressive.  Modern  methods  are  continually  being  in- 
stalled. The  business  is  growing.  Its  department  heads 
are  mostly  young  men  and  women,  and  it  is  beginning  to 
employ  college  trained  people.  In  my  general  education, 
my  courses  in  English,  journalism,  and  psychology  have 
been  most  helpful.  Work  on  a  newspaper  gave  me  excellent 
training  as  an  advertising  writer.  My  knowledge  of  type 
and  of  how  to  write  headlines  has  been  most  useful.    There 

*  Bureau  of  Vocational  Information,  Focatiotis  for  Business  and 
Professional  Women;  also  Bulletin  No.  5.  Positions  of  Responst- 
bility  in  Department  Store  Organizations  (1921)  ;  also  an  unpub- 
lished study  made  in  1919-1920  bv  the  Employment  Department  of 
the  New  York  City  Branch  of  the  Y.  W.  C.  A.  of  39  advertismg 
agencies  and  16  advertising  departments  of  companies  and  corpora- 
tions in  the  New  York  area. 


3o6        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

are  no  salary  differences  here  so  far  as  sex  is  concerned. 
Every  employee  comes  up  for  a  salary  increase  every  six 
months.  Women  considering  advertising  should  be  very 
sure  that  they  wish  tOy  enter  the  profession,  and  be  willing 
to  work  long  hours  and  hard." 

The  assistant  in  a  fuel  gas  company  says:  "There  is  a 
splendid  field  for  keen,  alert,  well-educated  women  in  the 
advertising  business  in  almost  any  branch,  but  they  have 
to  work  inside  and  outside  the  office.  ...  I  was  given  a 
chance  to  'make  good'  and  to  develop  the  feminine  view- 
point in  gas-appliance  advertising.  I  have  found  useful  in 
my  professional  training  detail  work  in  printing,  etc.  I 
sometimes  take  on  extra  advertising  work,  such  as  copy  or 
house  organs." 


The  distinctions  between  commercial  advertising  and  pub- 
licity have  already  been  set  forth.  It  took  the  war  to  make 
them  so  explicit  that  separate  publicity  organizations  and 
workers  have  appeared.  PubHcity  has  to  do  with  the  win- 
ning of  active  public  attention  to  a  cause,  institution,  or- 
ganization, or  movement,  which  will  express  itself  in  con- 
tributions, membership,  volunteer  aid,  or  other  forms  of 
carrying  out  the  program  suggested.  Private  organizations 
usually  seek  funds  either  directly  or  indirectly,  or  their  pub- 
licity may  be  primarily  educational,  looking  toward  the  shap- 
ing of  public  opinion  in  certain  directions,  such  as  publicity 
campaigns  for  improved  schools,  public  health,  or  more  en- 
lightened labor  legislation.  Political  organizations  aim  at 
a  publicity  that  will  win  votes,  government  departments, 
such  as  the  United  States  Department  of  Agriculture,  at 
widespread  diffusion  of  useful  information  and  improve- 
ment of  specific  conditions.  Enormous  amounts  of  money 
have  been  spent  on  publicity  of  late  years.  Labor  organi- 
zations have  learned  the  lesson,  and  are  maintaining  such 
elaborate  publicity  organizations  as  that  of  the  Plumb  Plan 
League  in  Washington.  Publicity  organizations  are  spe- 
cializing in  college  "drives,"  in  civic  activities  of  chambers 
of  commerce,  in  philanthropic,  religious,  financial,  and  in- 
dustrial appeals.    Publicity  deals  with  the  novel,  the  timely. 


INFORMATION  SERVICES  307 

It  studies  the  public  feeling  of  the  moment,  and  is  essen- 
tially a  form  of  promotion.  The  professional  requirements 
and  standards  of  each  publicity  undertaking  must  therefore 
be  carefully  determined.  Qualifications  vary  with  the  sub- 
ject-matter ;  but  twelve  publicity  agencies  in  New  York 
City  interviewed  in  connection  with  a  survey  of  oppor- 
tunities for  women  in  publicity  work  made  by  the  employ- 
ment department  of  the  Central  Branch  of  the  Young 
Women's  Christian  Association  in  1920  agreed  that  from 
two  to  five  years  of  newspaper  experience,  including  actual 
reporting,  was  essential.  Work  on  special  "drives"  or  cam- 
paigns is  temporary  in  the  nature  of  the  case ;  but  an  increas- 
ing number  of  social  and  civic  organizations  are  maintaining 
permanent  publicity  departments.  Opinions  vary  as  to 
whether  workers  in  such  departments  should  be  trained 
journalists  and  advertising  workers  or  trained  workers  in 
the  special  field.  The  facts  and  opinions  presented  should 
certainly  be  from  first-hand  and  competent  acquaintance. 
College  and  professional  women  are  being  employed  by 
most  publicity  organizations  or  departments ;  but  the  field 
is  limited.  A  few  experienced  women  are.  setting  up  as 
publicity  consultants.  Salaries  for  experienced  women  are 
around  $50  a  week,  and  are  said  to  be  about  ten  per  cent 
lower  than  those  for  men. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

ART  services:  literature,  drama,  pageantry;  architec- 
ture; OTHER  FINE  AND  APPLIED  ARTS 

Although  the  arts  have  long  taken  high  rank  among 
the  professions  and  possess  many  of  the  fundamental  pro- 
fessional attributes — disinterestedness,  group  spirit,  and  a 
public  and  social  value  increasingly  recognized — the  demands 
upon  their  practitioners  are  so  exceptional,  so  individual, 
in  many  ways  so  immeasurable,  that  it  is  impossible  to 
discuss  professional  women  in  the  arts  as  in  the  other 
professions.  On  the  other  hand,  the  arts  interpenetrate  so 
many  professions,  and  their  contribution  is  so  vitally  needed 
in  our  modern  social  order,  and  falls  so  far  short  of  what 
it  might  be,  that  any  treatment  of  women  professional 
workers  would  be  incomplete  without  at  least  a  general 
statement  of  their  status  and  opportunities  in  these  fields. 
Moreover,  women  workers  have  been  numerous  in  both  the 
fine  and  the  applied  arts,  and  nowhere  else  has  their  pro- 
fessional achievement  been  judged  more  wholly  on  its 
merits. 

In  the  fine  arts  particularly,  this  achievement  depends 
upon  a  high  degree  of  native  endowment  reinforced  by  the 
best  modern  training,  favorable  surroundings,  and  oppor- 
tunities for  the  practice  of  the  art  chosen.  We  no  longer 
accept  complacently  the  old  idea  that  artistic  ability  finds 
its  fullest  expression  through  struggling  with  untoward 
circumstances.  Without  artistic  ability  the  possession  of 
technical  skill  does  not  bring  success,  and  even  when  both 
are  of  a  high  order,  the  artist's  road  to  an  assured  profes- 
sional position  is  long  and  difficult.  It  shows  the  strength 
of  the  art  impulse  and  the  depth  of  the  artist's  inner  satis- 
factions that  so  many  people  are  willing  to  face  the  dis- 

308 


ART  SERVICES  309 

appointments  and  uncertainties  of  the  artist's  career.  In 
the  applied  arts  there  is  room  for  more  kinds  and  degrees  of 
talent  and  technical  equipment ;  but  here  too,  real  preemi- 
nence is  rare.  In  fact,  the  distinction  between  the  fine 
and  the  applied  arts  is  historic  and  practical  rather  than 
fixed  and  absolute.  All  arts  are  based  on  the  same  funda- 
mental principles,  and  all  are  more  or  less  related  to  the 
crafts  and  industries  and  to  the  public  and  private  conduct 
of  life.  Women  contemplating  entering  any  of  the  art  pro- 
fessions need  to  be  sure  of  their  own  artistic  aptitude  and  to 
inform  themselves  thoroughly  with  respect  to  preparation 
and  opportunities.  No  preparation  other  than  the  best  is 
worth  having. 

The  fine  arts  are  commonly  said  to  include  literature, 
drama,  music,  painting,  and  sculpture.  Architecture  is  the 
great  link  between  the  fine  and  the  applied  arts,  as  it  is 
between  art  and  the  engineering  sciences.  Closely  related 
to  it  are  landscape  architecture  and  design,  and  city  and 
town  planning.  Related  in  another  way  are  interior  decora- 
tion and  design  as  applied  to  furniture,  fabrics,  wall-papers, 
carvings,  tiles,  glass,  porcelain,  metal  and  leather  work, 
basketry,  and  other  articles  of  interior  use  and  ornament. 
Another  group  of  design  arts  has  to  do  with  textiles  and 
clothing,  jewelry,  lace,  and  embroidery.  In  another  group 
are  the  art  of  book  binding  and  the  graphic  arts,  etching, 
engraving,  printing,  illustrating,  poster  making,  and  possibly 
artistic  photography.  The  motion  picture  and  the  music  rec- 
ord both  have  their  artistic  aspects  and  possibilities. 

The  arts  are  also  classified  as  the  space  arts  and  the 
time  arts,  with  literature,  the  drama,  and  the  dance  partak- 
ing of  the  character  of  both.  Fundamentally  the  effect  pro- 
duced by  any  work  of  art,  whether  spatial  or  temporal,  is 
due  to  certain  combinations  of  pattern  and  rhythm  which  re- 
inforce old  and  deeply  rooted  organic  and  instinctive  pat- 
terns and  rhythms  in  human  beings.  This  unusual  degree 
of  correspondence  between  the  object  and  the  organism  pro- 
duces an  effect  at  the  same  time  of  life-enhancement  and 
of  reconciliation,  a  sense  of  escape  from  conflict,  limita- 
tion, and  self-consciousness  and  the  attainment  for  a  brief 
space  of  a  deeper  insight  and  a  fuller  satisfaction  than  or- 


3IO        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

dinary  life  affords.  It  is  this  correspondence  which  makes 
the  work  of  art  a  direct  and  powerful  source  of  emotion 
and  suggestion  and  thus  an  agency  of  unique  social  value 
through  its  ability  to  transmit  to  a  group  of  people  com- 
mon feelings,  moods,  and  attitudes  of  mind.  Its  definite 
subject-matter  is  subordinate  to  the  kind  of  emotional  re- 
sponse that  it  evokes. 

We  are  coming  to  see  that  with  the  complexities,  special- 
izations, and  separations  of  modern  life,  we  need  some- 
thing fundamental  that  shall  bring  people  together,  and 
furnish  some  interpretation  of  these  things,  some  compen- 
sation for  them,  even  if  it  cannot  do  away  with  them. 
Moreover,  national  prohibition  and  reductions  in  hours  of 
labor  compel  us  to  face  the  urgent  problems  of  the  uses 
of  leisure  time.  Art  has  a  major  role  to  play  in  any 
adequate  program  for  public  recreation.  Its  place  in  fac- 
tory production  is  more  difficult  to  determine.  But  we 
are  attacking  the  problems  of  industrial  art  with  new  vigor 
since  the  war,  and  are  learning  much  from  other  countries. 


As  has  been  said,  professional  work  in  journalism,  pub- 
lishing, and  advertising  is  commercial  rather  than  literary, 
although  it  may  give  acquaintance  with  literary  externals. 
The  essence  of  literature  as  an  art  is  the  impulse  to  com- 
municate to  others  through  one  of  the  many  literary  forms 
— poem,  play,  short  story,  novel,  essay,  criticism,  history — 
a  fresh  and  individual  interpretation  of  some  aspect  of  hu- 
man life.  This  impulse  is  strengthened  and  embodied  in 
appropriate  literary  form  not  through  living  in  any  sort 
of  "literary  atmosphere"  but  through  thinking  and  feeling 
clearly  and  vividly  and  gaining  insight  into  personality, 
situation,  and  the  varieties  of  human  experience.  People 
do  not  begin  as  writers  of  Hterature,  and  no  woman  should 
expect  to  earn  her  living  through  authorship  until  she  has 
made  a  name  for  herself  as  a  writer.  It  is  probably  not 
desirable  that  she  should.  Most  good  writing  is  done  in 
intervals  of  creative  leisure.  To  look  over  a  volume  of 
IVho's  Who  to  discover  the  occupations  of  contemporary 
writers  is  an  informing  exercise  for  a  beginner.    There  are, 


ART  SERVICES  311 

however,  certain  literary  and  social  tendencies  of  to-day 
which  are  likely  to  influence  young  women  with  genuine 
literary  ability  and  modern  outlook.  Chief  among  these  are 
current  movements  in  poetry  and  the  drama,  both  of  which 
are  showing  vigorous  life  and  commanding  wide  popular 
interest.  The  magazines  a/e  hospitable  to  really  good  verse 
and  to  good  writing  of  other  kinds.  The  course  in  play- 
writing  given  by  Professor  George  P.  Baker  of  Harvard 
Ujiiversity  has  led  to  similar  courses  of  a  pre-professional 
and  professional  character  in  other  colleges.  Not  only 
college  training  in  English  but  the  general  liberalizing  and 
enriching  of  mind  and  experience  that  come  through  col- 
lege work  and  college  personal  contacts  are  a  valuable  back- 
ground for  the  young  writer.  Literature  is  no  longer 
thought  of  as  a  matter  of  pure  inspiration.  The  hterary 
artist,  like  other  artists,  has  to  serve  an  apprenticeship.  A 
student  with  literary  interests  and  aptitudes  receives  now- 
adays in  college  generous  encouragement  and  assistance, 
and  has  varied  opportunities  to  try  herself  out  in  college 
publications,  prize  contests,  and  the  like.  Outside  of  col- 
lege, the  competition  is  severe. 

The  social  contribution  of  art  in  enabling  people  to  share 
a  concrete  and  satisfying  experience  has  already  been 
spoken  of.  We  are  coming  to  understand  more  clearly 
that  full  sharing  must  be  active  and  not  merely  passive,  a 
genuine  participation.  One  of  the  great  weaknesses  of 
modern  commercial  recreation  through  the  theater  and  the 
moving-picture  is  its  passivity.  It  is  the  logical  result  of 
long  hours  and  routine  work,  the  recreation  of  tired  and 
bored  people.  With  greater  leisure  there  is  prospect  of  a 
wider  demand  for  more  active  and  more  artistic  types  of 
recreation.  The  emotional  appeals  will  not  have  to  be  so 
crude  and  so  violent  in  order  to  overcome  the  inertia  of 
fatigue.  Gilbert  Chesterton  has  lately  observed  character- 
istically:  "To  amuse  oneself  is  a  mark  of  gaiety,  vitality, 
and  love  of  life.  To  be  amused  is  a  mark  of  melancholy, 
surrender,  and  potential  suicide."  There  have  been  efforts 
during  the  last  few  years  to  develop  popular  interest  and 
participation  in  various  arts  through  community  pageants 
and   folk-dancing,   community   singing,  community  drama, 


312       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

exhibitions  of  community  handicrafts,  competitions  and  ex- 
hibitions in  industrial  design,  traveling  collections  of  pic- 
tures. The  numerous  parades  during  and  after  the  war 
revealed  the  possibilities,  good  and  bad,  of  civic  decoration. 
Libraries,  art  museums,  schools,  social  settlements,  com- 
munity centers,  city  governments,  have  all  been  helping  to 
show  that  art  is  not  a  luxury  of  the  few — as  it  never  has 
been  until  modern  times — but  a  possession  and  an  activity 
of  the  many.  Only  beginnings  have  been  made.  But  in 
ten  years  the  progress  has  been  notable,  and  the  next  ten 
years  promise  far  more  comprehensive  results. 

Of  these  various  efforts  to  develop  a  social  art,  the  growth 
of  the  civic  and  art  drama,  as  distinct  from  the  commercial 
drama,  is  most  conspicuous.  It  has  expressed  itself  in 
diverse  ways,  through  little  theaters,  of  which  there  are  now 
more  than  fifty;  special  companies  giving  outdoor  plays, 
like  the  Ben  Greet  Company  and  the  Coburn  Players ;  per- 
formances under  academic  auspices,  as  in  the  Harvard 
Stadium  and  the  University  of  California  Greek  Theater; 
plays  written  and  performed  by  students  or  by  other  groups 
of  amateurs  or  semi-amateurs  ;  neighborhood  plays  like  those 
for  which  the  little  Neighborhood  Theater  in  New  York 
was  designed ;  community  pageant  and  drama  on  a  large 
scale  like  those  composed  and  directed  by  Percy  MacKaye. 
Hitherto  the  movement  has  been  more  or  less  scattered, 
amateur,  at  times  a  matter  of  pose.  It  has  been  a  protest 
and  a  demonstration  rather  than  an  organized  construc- 
tive movement.  But  it  stands  for  a  fundamental  idea, 
and  it  gives  every  sign  of  becoming  an  increasingly  impor- 
tant part  of  normal  community  life.  It  is  intimately  allied 
with  the  movement  for  stage  setting  and  decoration  in 
accordance  with  aesthetic  and  psychological  principles  and 
with  modern  movements  in  dancing  and  music,  which  are 
calling  for  the  combined  efforts  of  dramatists,  poets,  ac- 
tors, musicians,  interpretative  dancers,  designers  of  settings 
and  costumes,  producers,  directors,  and  managers.  Pro- 
fessional women  are  serving  in  all  these  capacities,  and  are 
likely  to  be  in  increasing  demand.  There  is  still  difficulty 
in  securing  really  professional  training  except  through  ap- 
prenticeship  and   experience.     The   Carnegie   Institute   of 


ART  SERVICES  313 

Technology  has  been  working  out  for  several  years  a  com- 
prehensive course  in  drama,  festival,  and  stage  setting;  and 
there  are  a  few  standard  schools  of  the  drama,  notably  the 
American  Academy  of  Dramatic  Arts  in  New  York,  which 
has  long  been  under  the  direction  of  Mr.  Franklin  H. 
Sargent.  Madame  Yvette  Guilbert  has  recently  opened  a 
School  of  the  Theater  in  New  York.  Professor  Baker's 
course  in  play-writing  and  his  dramatic  workshop  at  Har- 
vard have  been  a  veritable  school  of  playwrights,  and 
similar  work  at  Vassar  and  in  other  institutions  promises 
like  results.  There  are  various  schools  of  classic,  posture, 
and  folk  dancing.  Experience  in  college  and  in  settlement 
dramatic  work  and  in  music-school  settlements  has  often 
proved  of  value.  The  National  Board  of  Young  Women's 
Christian  Associations  has  established  a  department  of  pag- 
eantry and  the  drama;  Community  Service,  Incorporated, 
a  similar  department.  Rural  community  drama  has  been 
encouraged  under  the  leadership  of  the  College  of  Agri- 
culture of  Cornell  University,  the  State  Agricultural  College 
of  North  Dakota,  and  by  other  agencies.  The  Drama 
League  of  America  with  headquarters  in  Washington,  a 
central  dramatic  bookshop,  and  branches  and  bookshops  in 
various  cities,  fosters  genuine  dramatic  interests  of  all  kinds. 
Special  efforts  are  being  made  to  develop  the  dramatic  in- 
terests and  standards  of  children. 

This  widespread  and  growing  attention  to  the  drama  as  a 
social  and  educational  agency  is  providing  opportunities  for 
women  in  connection  with  settlement  houses,  community 
centers.  Community  Service,  Incorporated,  the  Young  Wom- 
en's Christian  Associations,  dramatic  associations,  civic  the- 
aters, and  to  some  extent  in  schools  and  colleges.  Pageant 
directors  usually  do  their  work  on  a  fee-charging  basis; 
other  workers  may  be  employed  on  a  salary.  Both  training 
and  employment  are  still  unstandardized,  but  the  field  chal- 
lenges the  attention  of  women  of  artistic  and  social  interests 
and  equipment  who  are  ready  to  throw  in  their  lot  with  a 
significant  movement  and  to  help  in  shaping  it. 

The  relation  of  professional  women  to  the  commercial 
theater  and  even  more  to  the  whole  motion-picture  industry 


314       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

is  far  more  difficult  to  determine  and  to  discuss  in  brief. 
Leaders  of  the  stage  have  always  stood  for  its  artistic  char- 
acter and  ideals ;  and  many  of  them  are  in  the  full  as  in 
the  popular  sense  "professionals,"  continually  studying  the 
problems  of  acting  as  one  of  the  great  arts.  A  woman  seri- 
ously considering  acting  as  a  profession  can  probably  do 
nothing  better  than  first  to  study  carefully  what  great  actors 
past  and  present  have  said  of  the  stage  and  possibly  to  con- 
sult some  well-known  actor  or  actress  of  high  standards, 
who  takes  an  interest  in  the  training  of  beginners.  A  recent 
book  on  Training  for  the  Stage  strongly  advocates  a  year 
or  two  of  study  in  a  good  school  of  acting  like  the  Ameri- 
can Academy  of  Dramatic  Arts,  and  laments  that  we  have 
no  publicly  supported  schools,  such  as  are  common  in 
European  countries.  "The  dramatic  profession  is  the  only 
one  in  the  United  States  in  which  the  ignorant  beginner  is 
paid  to  be  taught,  and  taught  by  a  slow,  laborious,  con- 
fused method  of  picking  his  way  through  the  mazes  of 
theatrical  experience,  experimenting  meanwhile  before  the 
paying  public.  The  necessity  for  an  educational  policy  for 
the  actor,  not  only  for  his  general  culture  and  the  technical 
requirements  of  his  craft  but  for  the  development  of  all 
his  personal  powers  and  faculties,  is  slowly  but  surely  ob- 
taining recognition.  Indeed,  the  denial  of  the  value  of  good 
educational  preparation  and  systematic  study  calls  in  ques- 
tion the  very  right  of  acting  to  be  termed  an  art  or  profes- 
sion." ^  The  stock  company  no  longer  affords  adequate 
training.  The  civic  and  art  drama  and  the  commercial 
drama  are  undoubtedly  learning  from  each  other.  In  the 
meantime  the  road  to  artistic  success  on  the  regular  stage 
is  long,  difficult,  and  uncertain,  with  constant  hard  work 
under  trying  conditions  and  small  and  irregular  financial 
returns.  Only  women  whose  ability  can  find  no  adequate 
satisfaction  elsewhere,  and  who  have  both  mental  and  phys- 
ical vigor  and  staying  power,  should  attempt  the  actor's 
career.  Successful  women  playrights  are  not  uncommon ; 
and  there  are  a  few  women  dramatic  agents  and  play- 
brokers.    The  woman  dramatic  critic  is  rare. 

Two  women  connected  with  one  of  the  most  successful 
'Arthur  ITornblow      Training  for  the  Stage   (1916),  p.  130. 


ART  SERVICES  315 

of  the  "little  theater"  ventures  in  New  York  filled  our 
schedules  in  1918.  One,  a  graduate  of  a  western  university 
and  of  a  well-known  school  of  expression,  was  a  producer 
and  director  of  plays  for  the  company,  having  full  charge 
of  the  production  of  the  play  on  the  acting  side  and  advising 
with  the  scenic  director.  The  other  has  been  vice-president 
of  the  company,  play  reader,  and  at  times  an  actress. 

The  director  says:  "There  are  comparatively  no  women 
producers.  It  has  always  been  a  theory  of  the  theater 
that  a  man  must  direct,  and  it  is  hard  to  break  in.  I  got 
in  through  the  Little  Theater  Movement,  which  is  much 
broader  in  regard  to  women.  I  attend  all  possible  perform- 
ances of  all  kinds,  and  study  production  in  this  way.  The 
only  way  to  secure  positions  is  to  apply  in  person.  It  is 
very  difficult  unless  you  can  show  your  work,  or  come 
highly  recommended  from  well-known  people.  The  whole 
theatrical  game  is  a  gamble !" 


The  development  of  the  motion-picture  business  has  been 
so  extraordinary,  and  is  still  so  far  from  being  fully 
evolved  or  stable  that  it  is  impossible  to  make  assured  state- 
ments or  even  prophecies  about  its  professional  and  art 
aspects.  It  has  hitherto  been  chiefly  in  the  hands  of  pro- 
ducers recruited  from  the  commercial  spoken  theater,  and 
can  be  compared  with  that  on  its  business  side  and  with 
journalistic  and  advertising  enterprises  (see  Chapter  XV) 
rather  than  with  the  arts.  Nevertheless,  it  has  large  artistic 
possibilities ;  and  its  social  appeal  is  so  tremendous  that 
it  merits  careful  attention  from  those  committed  to  the  de- 
velopment of  a  modern  popular  art.  Its  psychology  cannot 
be  ignored  any  more  than  the  psychology  of  the  Sunday 
newspaper,  the  comic  supplement,  or  billboard  and  electric 
advertising.  It  shares  with  them  the  drawback  of  being 
a  passive  and  at  the  same  time  a  highly  stimulating  kind 
of  experience.  But  in  spite  of  these  limitations,  its  con- 
creteness,  vividness,  and  accessibility  give  it  high  potential 
value  as  an  educational  and  artistic  medium.  Its  educa- 
tional use  is  being  steadily  developed ;  and  some  of  the 
leading  writers  of  the  day  are  studying  its  techniques.   Some 


3i6       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

of  the  great  spectacular  films  have  genuine  artistic  beauty, 
and  have  invited  the  cooperation  of  artists  and  other  experts 
in  their  preparation.  The  recent  gift  by  the  head  of  the 
Eastman  Kodak  Company  of  three  and  a  half  million  dol- 
lars to  the  University  of  Rochester  to  endow  a  great  school 
to  aid  in  the  development  of  appreciation  of  the  highest 
type  of  music  in  alliance  with  the  highest  type  of  motion 
picture  may  mark  the  beginning  of  their  recognition  as  an 
art  form.  Hitherto  professional  women  other  than  actresses 
have  had  little  to  do  with  the  motion-picture  business  ex- 
cept as  secretaries  to  directors,  or  as  writers  of  synopses, 
scenarios,  or  motion-picture  advertisements.  But  its  grow- 
ing dependence  upon  historic  and  artistic  research  and  upon 
methods  worked  out  in  the  best  modern  pageantry  and  stage 
setting  is  likely  to  increase  opportunities  for  women  pro- 
fessionally trained  along  these  lines. 


Professional  musicians,  painters,  and  sculptors  secure 
their  training  through  the  best  schools  and  masters  in  this 
country  and  abroad,  and  make  their  reputations  and  careers 
through  the  quality  of  their  work.  Unlike  European  coun- 
tries we  have  no  publicly  supported  schools  and  fellowships 
for  the  encouragement  of  the  fine  arts,  save  in  the  case  of 
a  few  museum  schools  under  public  control.  But  we  are 
apparently  entering  upon  a  period  of  large  private  en- 
dowments for  this  purpose.  In  addition  to  the  Eastman 
foundation  already  mentioned,  the  past  year  has  seen  the 
establishment  of  the  Juillard  Musical  Foundation  with  an 
endowment  estimated  at  from  five  to  twenty  million  dollars 
and  of  the  Louis  Comfort  Tiffany  Art  Foundation  with 
an  endowment  of  a  million  in  addition  to  the  donor's  country 
estate  and  art  collections.  Both  are  primarily  for  the  bene- 
fit of  promising  students  of  the  respective  arts.  A  collabora- 
tion of  the  arts  in  the  public  interest  is  seen  in  the  recently 
inaugurated  practice  of  giving  a  series  of  free  concerts  in 
the  great  city  art  museums,  such  as  the  Metropolitan 
Museum  in  New  York  and  the  Art  Institute  of  Chicago, 
The  three-year  fellowships  of  the  American  Academy  in 
Rome  in   painting,   sculpture,   architecture,  and   landscape 


ART  SERVICES  317 

architecture,  of  the  value  of  $1,000  a  year,  are  now  for  the 
first  time  open  to  women.  There  are  also  a  few  traveling 
fellowships  in  painting  and  music  at  $1,500  a  year.  There 
is  a  National  Association  of  Women  Painters  and  Sculptors. 
The  most  frequent  salaried  positions  for  women  well 
equipped  in  the  fine  arts  are  to  be  found  in  teaching,  par- 
ticularly in  public  schools,  and  in  museums.  Special  train- 
ing in  the  teaching  of  art  to  children  of  various  ages  may 
be  secured  at  such  institutions  as  Teachers  College  of 
Columbia  University,  the  School  of  Education  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Chicago,  and  the  Massachusetts  Normal  Art 
School.  The  new  psychology  of  art  teaching  breaks  down 
the  sharp  distinction  between  the  fine  and  applied  arts, 
and  makes  much  of  composition  and  pattern  as  appHed 
to  articles  made  by  the  children  themselves.  There  are 
also  more  limited  opportunities  in  art  schools  and  classes; 
and  there  is  every  prospect  of  a  great  impetus  arising 
largely  out  of  the  war  toward  the  teaching  of  industrial 
art  as  an  important  aspect  of  vocational  education.  The 
American  Federation  of  Arts  in  1918  passed  a  resolution 
urging  the  Federal  Board  for  Vocational  Education  to 
encourage  the  development  of  this  vocational  field. ^  Grand 
Rapids,  Michigan,  a  great  furniture-making  center,  has 
estabhshed  a  school  of  art  and  industry  as  part  of  its  public 
school  system ;  and  there  are  other  general  or  special  schools 
such  as  the  Rhode  Island  School  of  Design  and  the  Massa- 
chusetts state-supported  textile  schools.  Teachers  of  in- 
dustrial art  are  likely" to  be  in  great  demand.  They  should 
preferably  have  had  some  European  training. 

Opportunities  are  developing  in  the  fields  of  community 
and  school  group  music.  The  war  greatly  increased  the 
popularity  of  group  singing  under  trained  leaders;  and  al- 
though the  majority  of  these  leaders  are  men,  there  are 
places  for  women  leaders  in  shops  and  factories  where 
women  are  employed,  in  schools,  settlements,  community 
clubs  of  women,  Girl  Scout  and  Young  Women's  Christian 

*See  Industrial  Art,  A  National  Asset:  A  Series  of  Graphic 
Charts.  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Education.  Industrial  Education  Circular, 
No.  3.    May,  1919- 


3i8        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

Association  groups,  prisons  and  reformatories  for  women, 
and  so  on. 


Architecture  is  the  most  thoroughly  professionalized  of 
the  applied  arts  in  which  women  have  engaged.  While 
the  number  of  women  architects  is  still  small  in  comparison 
with  the  number  of  men,  it  has  increased  markedly  in  the  last 
forty  years.  According  to  the  federal  census,  there  were 
seventeen  women  architects  in  the  United  States  in  1880; 
three  hundred  and  two  in  1910.  These,  however,  were 
less  than  one  per  cent  of  the  total  number  of  architects. 
The  increase  in  the  past  ten  years  has  probably  been  small. 
Only  four  women  are  reported  by  the  Bureau  of  Education 
as  receiving  architectural  degrees  in  1916.  Nevertheless 
many  of  the  larger  cities  have  women  architects  in  success- 
ful independent  practice ;  and  others  are  in  salaried  positions 
with  architectural  firms.  Still  others  are  using  their  archi- 
tectural training  as  an  invaluable  background  for  their  work 
as  interior  decorators.  The  architectural  profession  has  not 
been  notably  hospitable  to  the  small  body  of  women  work- 
ers ;  and  it  has  been  alleged  that  women  architects  are 
seriously  at  a  disadvantage  on  the  engineering  and  con- 
tracting sides  of  the  work.  This  is  a  statement  that  cannot 
as  yet  be  wholly  disproved.  But  most  of  the  best  schools 
of  architecture  are  open  to  women  as  well  as  to  men,  so 
that  they  may  receive  the  same  training.  And  a  few  women 
architects  have  handled  without  difficulty  both  the  letting  of 
contracts  and  the  actual  supervision  of  workmen.  Many, 
however,  have  preferred  office  positions,  and  even  with  full 
architectural  training  have  perhaps  too  often  been  content 
to  serve  as  architectural  draftsmen.  An  apprenticeship  of 
this  kind  in  a  good  office  is,  however,  of  value  to  every 
architect.  In  some  states,  practicing  architects  must  be 
licensed.  With  the  housing  experience  gained  during  the 
war  and  the  urgency  of  present  housing  problems,  espe- 
cially for  industrial  workers  and  other  people  of  small  in- 
comes, there  seems  a  new  opportunity  for  women  architects 
to  direct  their  attention  to  building  for  these  groups  and 
to  the  problem  of  community  centers.    There  is  also  a  chance 


ART  SERVICES  319 

to  specialize  in  the  remodeling  of  old  houses,  both  in  town 
and  country.  A  woman  architect  in  New  York  has  done 
distinctive  work  in  the  making  over  of  old-fashioned  dwell- 
ings into  attractive  apartment  houses.  It  is  often  said  that 
there  should  be  a  woman  architect  in  every  office  to  pass 
upon  the  practical  convenience  and  utility  of  all  plans  for 
private  houses  and  public  institutions.  While  this  is  un- 
doubtedly true,  it  by  no  means  exhausts  the  range  of  pos- 
sibilities for  women.  They  should  follow  their  individual 
bent  and  the  demands  of  the  profession  as  freely  as  men. 
The  professional  training  for  architecture  is  long  and 
severe ;  but  it  appeals  in  so  many  ways  that  it  is  surprising 
that  more  women  with  tastes  and  aptitudes  in  these  direc- 
tions do  not  choose  it  as  a  profession. 

There  are  probably  more  women  landscape  architects 
than  architects  proper;  but  not  so  many  with  a  training 
which  measures  up  to  the  highest  standards.  It  is  difficult 
to  draw  the  line  between  the  woman  landscape  architect, 
the  woman  landscape  gardener,  and  even  the  simple  con- 
sulting gardener.  There  are  two  small  schools  of  land- 
scape architecture  exclusively  for  women ;  but  women  seri- 
ously considering  this  work  vvill  do  well  to  consult  the  best 
authorities  in  the  profession  in  regard  to  training.  Several 
large  universities  give  excellent  courses.^  With  the  increase 
in  country  estates  and  the  greater  interest  in  formal  land- 
scape treatment  that  is  likely  to  follow  our  closer  European 
contacts,  there  should  be  less  uncertain  opportunities  for  the 
thoroughly  equipped  woman  in  this  profession.  Large  archi- 
tectural firms  not  infrequently  have  landscape  architects  on 
their  staffs. 

It  sometimes  seems  as  if  half  the  women  of  our  ac- 
quaintance were  becoming  interior  decorators ;  and  the  term 
covers  every  type  from  women  of  prolonged  professional 
training  to  amateurs  adventuring  in  business  on  a  small  cap- 
ital of  taste  and  encouragement  from  their  friends.  Voca- 
tions for  Business  and  Professional  IVomen  says  that  "at 

*  See  Henry  V.  Hubbard  and  Theodora  Kimball.  Landscape 
Architecture — A  Classification  Scheme.  Harvard  University  Press 
(1920). 


320        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

the  foot  of  the  scale  are  those  with  Httle  training  who  are  not 
much  more  than  shoppers"  and  at  the  other  extreme  women 
with  from  six  to  nine  years  of  training  who  are  recognizee? 
as  experts.  It  is  indeed  a  "profession  in  the  making,"  and 
the  present  lively  interest  in  the  subject,  stimulated  by  the 
popular  magazines  and  the  flood  of  art  objects,  art  ideas,  and 
art  catchwords  swelled  by  the  war,  is  bringing  into  it  in  even 
greater  numbers  people  without  professional  equipment  or 
attitude.  On  the  other  hand,  a  number  of  experienced 
and  well-established  women  decorators  in  New  York  have 
been  working  for  several  years  toward  a  professional  or- 
ganization and  a  formulation  of  standards  of  preparation, 
apprenticeship,  and  compensation.  It  is  only  through  such 
efforts  that  the  occupation  can  really  acquire  a  professional 
status.  It  suffers  from  being  so  largely  on  the  basis  of  in- 
dependent and  competitive  business,  although  there  are  sala- 
ried positions  to  be  had  with  the  larger  firms  and  in  the 
interior  decorating  departments  of  the  great  department 
stores  and  furnishing  houses.  As  a  whole,  it  is  perhaps  not 
unfair  to  say  that  it  is  at  present  more  nearly  on  the  basis 
of  dressmaking  than  on  the  basis  of  a  profession.  Never- 
theless, many  of  the  standard  schools  of  art  and  design 
are  giving  courses  of  two  or  even  three  years  in  interior 
decorating,  including  the  elements  of  architecture,  the  study 
of  historic  periods,  design,  color,  ornament,  furniture,  tex- 
tiles. This  training  involves  the  working  out  of  concrete 
problems  or  "projects"  in  decoration  and  the  use  of  illus- 
trative materials  in  museums,  available  private  collections, 
and  commercial  houses  of  reputation.  The  University  of 
Minnesota  is  requiring  the  first  two  years'  work  in  archi- 
tecture of  its  students  of  interior  decorating.  The  Beaux- 
Arts  Institute  of  Design  in  New  York,  in  cooperation  with 
the  Society  of  Beaux  Arts  Architects,  the  Art  Alliance  of 
America,  the  National  Sculpture  Society,  and  the  Society 
of  Mural  Painters,  offers  courses  in  architectural  design 
interior  decoration  and  industrial  art  design,  sculpture, 
modeling  of  ornament,  and  composition  in  mural  painting. 
At  present,  training  in  interior  decorating  has  marked 
limitations  on  the  business  side — buying,  marketing,  making 
of  specifications  and  contracts,  estimating  of  costs — which 


ART  SERVICES  321 

might  be  done  away  with  through  practice  and  apprentice  ar- 
rangements between  the  schools  and  interior  decorating 
firms  and  departments  of  high  standing.  Apprenticeship 
to-day  is  on  an  individual  and  precarious  basis  with  low  pay, 
seasonal  fluctuation  of  employment,  and  no  assurance  of 
training  beyond  what  may  be  picked  up. 

With  the  beginnings  already  made,  interior  decorating  is 
at  a  point  where  it  might  easily  progress  through  the  further 
stages  of  professional  evolution — organization  of  associa- 
tions ;  formulation  of  educational  standards  and  programs ; 
definition  of  apprenticeship ;  standardization  of  salaries  and 
fees ;  possible  registration  of  qualified  workers ;  holding  of 
exhibitions  and  competitions.  It  has  much  to  learn  in 
these  matters  from  the  allied  profession  of  architecture 
Interior  decorators,  like  other  modern  workers,  tend  to  spe- 
cialization in  hangings,  furniture,  lighting  arrangements,  and 
so  on.  But  to  be  truly  professional,  they  must  have  an 
understanding  of  the  principles  and  problems  of  their  en- 
tire field. 

Of  more  permanent  and  recognized  artistic  importance  is 
the  work  of  the  mural  or  decorative  painter.  There  has 
been  a  marked  development  of  this  form  of  art  in  this 
country  within  recent  years,  and  it  is  to  be  found  in  the 
arger  private  houses  as  well  as  in  public  buildings,  hotels, 
and  occasionally  in  churches.  At  least  one  woman  mural 
painter,  Miss  Violet  Oakley,  has  achieved  distinction.  The 
designing  of  stained  glass  is  a  related  art.  The  decorative 
painter  also  frequently  designs  magazine  covers  and  posters; 
and  some  of  them  are  successful  illustrators.  The  field  of 
poster  designing  has  been  greatly  enlarged  by  the  war,  and 
American  posters  have  improved  conspicuously  in  eflfective- 
ness  and  artistic  character.  They  will  undoubtedly  continue 
to  be  used  in  many  forms  of  publicity,  and  oiifer  a  prac- 
tically new  opportunity  to  women  of  good  modern  training, 
originality,  and  understanding  of  the  nature  of  popular  ap- 
peal. Their  recent  artistic  development  is  bound  to  im- 
prove the  character  of  much  billboard,  display,  and  maga- 
zine advertising. 

Illustrating  in  both  black  and  white  and  color  is  com- 


322       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

monly  divided  into  pictorial,  including  magazine,  book, 
or  newspaper  illustrating,  and  commercial,  including  fash- 
ion drawing  and  the  preparation  of  other  drawings  and 
sketches  for  trade  catalogues,  trade  journals,  and  the  ad- 
vertising sections  of  magazines  and  papers.  The  growth 
of  the  greeting-card  industry  has  increased  the  demand  for 
pictorial  illustrations.  Most  of  the  art  schools  provide 
special  courses  in  poster  designing  and  illustrating.  They 
are  recognized  forms  of  commercial  art.  Under  this  head- 
ing may  also  be  included  commercial  photography,  whicli 
is  largely  used  in  the  reproduction  of  trade  objects  and 
models.  A  commercial  artist  is  likely  to  need  a  supple- 
mentary knowledge  of  photographic  processes  and  other 
forms  of  mechanical  reproduction.  The  woman  cartoonist 
is  practically  unknown,  but  there  is  no  reason  why  she 
may  not  appear. 

Industrial  art  in  the  narrower  sense  has  to  do  with  the 
preparation   of   designs    to   be    used    in   the   processes    of 
manufacturing  by  machinery.     In  the  broader  sense  it  in- 
cludes the  crafts,  the  making  by  hand  of  artistic  objects 
of   daily   use.      Industrial    designers    prepare   designs    for 
textiles,   especially   for  printed  or  woven  patterns  in   silk 
or   cotton ;    for   clothing ;    for   lace   and    embroidery ;    for 
jewelry;  for  wall-paper,  rugs  and  carpets;  furniture,  pot- 
tery, glass,  and  metal  work.   The  war  has  made  tremendous 
changes  in   industrial  art,  by  throwing  us  upon  our  own 
resources  and  forcing  manufacturers  for  the  first  time  seri 
ously  to  study  the  reasons  for  European  superiority  in  many 
fields.    We  are  at  the  beginning  of  a  new  and  active  period. 
The  industries  are  cooperating  with  the  art  schools  and  with 
the  great   museums.      They   are   offering  prizes   in   design 
competitions,  and  establishing  scholarships  and  fellowships 
The  Metropolitan  Museum  has  within  the  past  year  ap 
pointed  an  associate  in  industrial  arts,  and  held  an  indus 
trial  art  exhibit  with  special  reference  to  textiles  and  cos 
tumes.    The  Art  Alliance  of  America  has  conducted  severa 
contests   and   exhibitions   of   industrial   design   with   prizes! 
offered  by  the  great  trade  paper,  JVoinen's  Wear,  and  by 
various  manufacturers.     Plans  have  been  matured   for  a* 
comprehensive   survey   of   our   existing  industrial   art   re 


ART  SERVICES  323 

sources  by  the  National  Society  for  Vocational  Education 
in  cooperation  with  art  schools,  art  museums,  and  manu- 
facturers and  looking  to  the  development  of  a  national  pro- 
gram for  the  training  of  designers.  Among  industries  to 
be  studied  are  the  costume  trades,  textiles,  printing,  jewelry, 
silverware,  wall-paper,  lighting  fixtures,  ceramics,  furniture, 
and  interior  decoration. 

There  is  a  corresponding  activity  in  the  field  of  the 
artistic  handicrafts  and  a  growing  understanding  of  their 
bearing  on  artistic  production  as  a  whole.  The  National 
Society  of  Craftsmien  has  founded  a  school  for  the  train- 
ing of  workers,  and  advocates  the  establishment  of  such 
schools  in  connection  with  factories.  In  June  1919  the  Art 
AlHance  of  America  held  an  exhibition  of  the  handicrafts 
of  foreign-born  workers,  which  attracted  the  attention  of 
manufacturers.  Through  its  artistic  industries  section,  it 
is  now  organizing  a  system  with  neighborhood  houses  as 
centers  for  bringing  these  handicrafts  into  relations  with 
manufacturers,  wholesalers,  and  retailers,  both  as  artistic 
products  and  as  offering  suggestions  for  designs.  Individual 
social  settlements  have  long  encouraged  and  disposed  of 
these  foreign  handicraft  articles ;  but  this  seems  the  first 
effort  to  bring  them  into  the  main  stream  of  production. 
There  have  likewise  been  associations  for  fostering  native 
handicraft  industries,  such  as  those  of  Deerfield,  Massa- 
chusetts, and  of  the  southern  mountaineers.  The  Women's 
Educational  and  Industrial  Union  maintains  a  shop  for  ar- 
tistic handwork,  and  there  are  various  societies  of  arts 
and  crafts.  The  development  of  occupational  therapy  in 
hospitals  has  led  in  some  cases  to  the  production  of  articles 
of  artistic  merit  and  selling  value.  Occupational  therapists, 
or  teachers  of  crafts  in  hospitals,  are  dealt  with  in  Chapter 
V.  An  Art  Center  has  been  incorporated  in  New  York  City 
for  the  promotion  of  industrial  art,  and  has  the  backing  of 
many  associations  of  artists  and  art  craftsmen.  It  is  hoped 
that  similar  centers  will  be  established  in  all  the  important 
manufacturing  cities. 

From  many  different  directions  comes  a  demand  which 
exceeds  the  supply  for  designers,  craftsmen,  and  other  work- 
ers in  applied  art.    There  are  already  many  women  in  the 


324        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

art  occupations,  some  of  them  receiving  high  salaries. 
Among  them  are  several  research  experts  in  textiles  and 
other  special  art  fields  and  a  larger  number  who  are  expert 
craftsmen  in  jewelry,  weaving,  bookbinding,  and  other 
crafts.  A  number  are  in  business  for  themselves.  In  the 
future  women  will  undoubtedly  have  to  meet  higher  pro- 
fessional standards  and  secure  more  thorough  and  pro- 
longed professional  training.  Besides  teaching  in  art  schools, 
general  schools,  and  vocational  schools,  there  is  a  prospect 
of  positions  as  supervisors  and  instructors  in  factory  schools 
and  of  young  workers  in  service. 

The  American  Art  Anniid,  published  by  the  American 
Federation  of  Arts,  with  headquarters  in  Washington,  pre- 
sents a  yearly  survey  of  the  range  of  art  activities  in  this 
country.  At  the  1918  meeting  of  this  association,  the  find- 
ing of  positions  for  industrial  art  workers  was  discussed. 
The  Art  Alliance  of  America  maintains  in  New  York  a 
placement  bureau  for  this  purpose,  and  is  probably  the  best 
source  of  information  and  assistance.  Salaries  in  applied 
art  work  are  so  unstandardized,  and  are  changing  so  rapidly, 
that  it  is  unsafe  to  give  any  figures.  A  designer  with  any 
training  is  likely  to  receive  $25  a  week  to  begin  with; 
and  $50  a  week  and  up  are  received  by  workers  of  some 
experience. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

TECHNICAL    SERVICES:    SCIENCES    AND    TECHNOLOGIES)    PSY- 
CHOLOGY ;  STATISTICS 


The  training  acquired  in  university  and  college  scientific 
laboratories,  especially  in  bacteriology  and  other  aspects  of 
biology,  chemistry,  physics,  psychology,  and  geology,  and 
college  training  in  mathematics  and  statistics  have  a  direct 
relation  to  scientific  and  technical  work  in  a  variety  of 
occupations.  These  subjects  are  distinctly  instrumental  in 
their  applications ;  and  this  chapter,  accordingly,  is  not  so 
much  a  discussion  of  a  relatively  independent  field  of  pro- 
fessional employment  as  it  is  a  discussion  of  the  openings 
for  scientifically  and  technically  trained  women  in  a  number 
of  fields.  It  connects  closely  with  the  chapters  on  health 
services,  food  and  living  services,  personnel  and  industrial 
services,  commercial  services,  library  and  museum  services, 
and  educational  services.  It  bears  intimately  upon  govern- 
ment services.  As  fast  as  any  field  of  work  develops  agen- 
cies for  investigation  and  research,  it  calls  for  women  with 
one  or  other  of  these  types  of  equipment. 

Before  the  war  teaching  was  the  major  occupation 
of  women  trained  in  the  sciences,  although  they  had  to  meet 
a  strong  feeling,  especially  in  high  schools,  that  science  de- 
partments were  a  man's  province.  But  for  at  least  ten 
years  before  1914  a  small  but  increasing  number  of  women 
had  been  going  into  public  and  private  health  laboratories, 
federal  departments,  notably  the  Department  of  Agriculture, 
and  in  an  experimental  fashion,  into  industrial  laboratories. 
When  it  became  evident  that  the  war  was  to  be  won  to  a 
large  extent  by  scientists  and  engineers,  and  the  actual 
and  threatened  shortage  of  men  in  these  professions  became 
acute,  attention  turned  to  the  only  other  source  of  supply, 

325 


326       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

scientifically  and  technically  trained  women.  It  proved  to 
be  meager,  for  the  number  of  really  expert  scientific  women 
was  small;  there  were  practically  no  women  engineers,  in 
spite  of  an  occasional  graduate  from  an  engineering  school 
and  few  women  draftsmen.  The  universities  and  colleges 
adapted  their  scientific  training  for  women  to  some  extent 
in  the  direction  of  war  needs.  Certain  technical  schools, 
such  as  the  Carnegie  Institute  of  Technology  and  the  Case 
School  of  Applied  Science,  offered  special  courses  in  the 
summer  and  autumn  of  1918  to  train  women  as  mechanical 
draftsmen  and  "engineers  of  tests"  for  the  Ordnance  De- 
partment. Others,  like  Drexel  Institute,  organized  courses 
for  dietitians  and  "laboratory'  technicians."  Some  of  the 
great  industrial  corporations,  like  the  DuPont  de  Nemours 
Company,  the  General  Electric  Company,  and  the  Eastman 
Kodak  Company,  working  on  war  orders,  took  groups  of 
young  college  women  into  their  laboratories,  giving  them 
training  in  service  courses  in  special  branches  of  industrial 
chemistry,  engineering,  and  optics.  Government  depart- 
ments called  for  women  topographical  draftsmen  and  map- 
makers  ;  the  Bureau  of  Standards  m.ade  use  of  .women 
laboratory  assistants  in  chemistry  and  physics. 

While  many  of  these  women  were  released  at  the  end 
of  the  war,  and  while  the  total  number  employed  has  prob- 
ably been  exaggerated,  there  is  no  doubt  that  their  war- 
service  accustomed  industrial  employers  and  government 
departments  to  the  idea  of  women  as  laboratory  and  re- 
search workers.  They  are  continuing  to  turn  to  the  col- 
leges and  the  occupations  bureaus  for  suitable  candidates, 
especially  in  the  fields  of  public  health,  industrial  chemistry 
and  physics,  psychology,  and  statistics ;  to  some  extent  in 
engineering,  in  so  far  as  it  has  to  do  with  office  and  labora- 
tory procedures.  They  are  retaining  a  number  of  women 
war-workers  as  permanent  members  of  their  force. 

An  editorial  article  in  the  Journal  of  Industrial  and 
Engineering  Chemistry,^  entitled  The  Wcxm-an  Chemist  Has 
Come  to  Stay,  quotes  the  following  estimate  from  the 
chief  chemist  of  the  Illinois  Steel  Company  pi  the  women 
chemists  in  his  laboratory  during  the  war:    "They  learned 

'  March,  1919. 


I 


TECHNICAL  SERVICES  12^ 

the  work  as  quickly  as  any  men  of  like  training  could  have 
learned  it.  .  .  .  They  were  and  are  careful,  conscientious, 
reliable  workers  in  the  field  of  industrial  chemistry,  taking 
their  turn  at  night  work  cheerfully,  and  so  far  as  I  can 
learn,  contentedly.  During  the  month  of  July,  1918,  there 
were  employed  on  iron  and  steel  work  thirty-one  men  and 
seven  women.  Total  number  of  determinations  made  ...  on 
iron  and  steel  by  women  .  .  .  15.6  per  cent  of  the  total. 
Per  cent  of  women  employed,  18.5 — not  quite  their  share; 
they  were  learning  the  work.  During  the  month  of  October 
there  were  thirty-six  men  and  an  average  of  six  and  a 
half  women  .  .  .  Total  number  of  determinations  made 
...  by  women  16  per  cent  of  the  total.  Percentage  of 
women  employed,  15.3.  From  this  it  is  readily  seen  that 
as  soon  as  the  W'Omen  learned  the  work  they  carried  their 
share.  .  .  .  During  the  hot  weather,  when  to  sleep,  for  those 
working  at  night,  was  almost  impossible,  the  percentage  of 
women  off  duty  was  less  than  the  men.  The  percentage 
off  duty  on  account  of  sickness  is  not  greater  than  the  men. 
In  fact,  it  has  not  equaled  the  men  in  our  particular  case, 
several  of  our  men  being  on  extended  sick  leave.  Requests 
for  days  off  duty  by  women  .  .  .  are  not  more  than  those 
of  men." 

In  another  part  of  the  same  journal  is  a  discussion  of 
the  over-supply  of  chemists  called  forth  by  an  article  in 
a  preceding  number  urging  unemployed  chemists  to  return 
to  the  colleges  and  universities  for  more  advanced  train- 
ing and  "to  utilize  their  time  in  further  education  or  even 
in  teaching!"  A  professor  of  chemical  engineering  in  a 
great  university  sends  the  following  estimate  of  the  value 
of  graduate  training  in  chemistry,  which  may  well  be  taken 
to  heart  by  women  chemists  and  indeed  by  all  women  in 
science :  "Some  four  years  ago  I  attempted  to  arrive  at  an 
estimate  of  the  value  to  the  industries  of  men  with  gradu- 
ate training.  The  estimates  were  made  in  various  terms 
by  men  experienced  in  the  chemical  industries.  .  .  .  The  re- 
sults finally  arrived  at  were :  that  a  man  with  one  year^  of 
graduate  training  is  of  approximately  double  the  value  of 
a  man  having  only  the  bachelor's  degree ;  that  with  two 
years  of  graduate  training  he  is  three  times  as  valuable ;  and 


328        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

that  with  the  doctor's  degree,  ordinarily  representing  three 
years'  graduate  training,  he  is  on  an  average  five  times 
as  valuable  as  the  man  with  only  the  bachelor's  degree.  Also 
it  was  the  general  opinion  that  for  a  given  age  the  salaries 
paid,  beyond  that  necessary  for  a  bare  living  .  .  .  were  not 
far  from  .  .  .  the  ratio  just  mentioned." 

The  importance  of  thorough  training  for  women  in  sci- 
ence can  hardly  be  too  much  emphasized  at  present,  when 
as  a  result  of  taking  on  imperfectly  and  hastily  trained 
women  during  the  war,  employers  betray  a  tendency  to 
look  upon  all  women  scientific  workers  as  "technicians" 
and  routine  assistants  rather  than  as  professional  workers 
in  the  full  sense.  Not  only  for  their  own  careers  but  for 
the  sake  of  others  who  may  follow,  scientific  women  need 
to  have  unimpeachable  qualifications,  to  expect  no  favors, 
and  to  show  marked  tenacity  and  courage.  They  are  still 
pioneers.  As  a  result  of  the  war,  however,  it  seems  to  be 
admitted  that  a  woman  may  fill  any  purely  laboratory  posi- 
tion for  which  she  is  equipped,  even  that  of  director.  As 
yet  she  is  not  considered  as  in  line  for  positions  having  to 
do  with  production,  nor  for  those  involving  chemical  or 
other  scientific  engineering.  Thoroughly  prepared  women, 
while  willing  to  begin  at  the  bottom  and  to  demonstrate  their 
ability,  should  at  the  same  time  be  on  their  guard  against 
being  used  by  employers  to  get  expert  work  more  cheaply 
done  than  by  men,  and  should  stand  firmly  for  recognition 
and  promotion  on  their  record  of  work  accomplished.  There 
is  professional  as  well  as  industrial  "undercutting."  But 
employers  complain  that  women  in  laboratories  are  not  al- 
ways willing  to  be  held  accountable  for  failures  as  well  as 
for  successes. 

Material  collected  in  1920  for  a  bulletin  on  The  Woman 
Chemist^  shows  salaries  of  fifteen  chemists  ranging  from 
$1,450  to  over  $3,000,  with  a  median  salary  of  $2,000.  Of 
twelve  giving  the  date  of  taking  their  present  positions, 
ten  have  entered  upon  the  work  since  August,  191 7.  Eleven 
out  of  the  fifteen  have  received  their  highest  degrees  since 

*  For  the  use  of  this  material  acknowledgment  is  due  to  the  Bu- 
reau of  Vocational  Information.  For  further  information,  see 
The  WoMian  Chemist.    Bulletin  No.  4,  1921. 


TECHNICAL  SERVICES  329 

1914.  Two  have  doctor's  degrees ;  five  master  of  science 
degrees ;  two  master  of  arts ;  six  bachelor  of  science  or 
bachelor  of  arts.  No  clear  correlations  between  degrees 
and  salaries  emerge,  although  the  medians  increase  slightly 
with  the  higher  degrees.  The  highest  salary  is  received 
by  a  woman  holding  the  B.  S.  and  M.  S.  degrees  from  two 
well-known  western  state  universities.  One  Ph.  D.  at  $2,500 
is  head  of  the  testing  and  research  laboratory  of  an  eastern 
manufacturing  company.  She  does  not  state  her  years  of 
service.  Another,  who  has  just  received  her  doctorate,  is 
analytical  and  research  chemist  in  a  yeast  company  at  $1,800. 
Others  in  industrial  work  include  research  chemists  and 
assistants  in  electrical,  carburundum,  and  rubber  regenerat- 
ing companies;  an  analytical  and  research  chemist  in  a  glass- 
ware company;  a  consulting  chemist  in  a  jewelers*  associa- 
tion, and  a  chemist  in  the  dyestufifs  technical  laboratory  and 
dyestufifs  sales  department  of  a  great  chemical  industry. 
Two  are  in  the  federal  Department  of  Agriculture,  one  in 
the  Bureau  of  Chemistry,  the  other  as  a  food  and  nutrition 
specialist  in  the  States  Relations  Service  in  charge  of  in- 
vestigations on  cereals  and  baking.  One  is  director  of 
the  bureau  of  foods  and  drugs  of  a  state  board  of  public 
health,  and  has  charge  of  the  inspection  of  dairies,  bakeries, 
and  groceries,  at  a  salary  of  $2,400.  Two  are  in  charge 
of  the  private  laboratories  of  physicians,  one  also  serving 
as  a  hospital  clinical  pathologist  and  bacteriologist.^ 

A  bacteriologist  filling  our  schedule  is  in  charge  of  the 
diagnostic  laboratory  of  a  state  department  of  health,  her 
position  involving  diagnostic  work,  supervision  of  two  as- 
sistant bacteriologists,  two  laboratory  assistants,  two  clerks, 
and  two  office  boys.  She  is  a  graduate  of  the  Massachu- 
setts Institute  of  Technolog}%  has  done  graduate  work,  and 
been  a  college  instructor.  She  selects  her  assistants,  who 
are  college  women,  and  recommends  their  appointment.  In 
1918  she  received  a  salary  of  $2,000,  which  was  higher  than 

*  The  War  Department  Committee  on  Classification  of  Personnel 
prepared  specifications  in  1918  for  over  fifty  kinds  of  chemists. 
See  O.  P.  Hopkins.  Wage  a)id  Salary  Earners  in  Chemical  In- 
dustries. Journal  of  Industrial  and  Engineering  Chemistry.  August 
I,  1919. 


330        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

that  paid  to  her  predecessor,  a  man.  A  chemist  in  a  safety 
razor  company  makes  analyses  of  steel,  brass,  salts,  and 
plating  solutions. 

Some  of  the  comments  follow : 

"For  the  majority  of  women  straight  chemistry  will  not 
get  them  very  far.  The  big  thing  in  chemistry  is  chemical 
engineering,  and  few  women  would  ever  be  fitted  for  that 
work,  while  routine  chemistry  would  become  very  monoto- 
nous. .  .  .  That  would  be  the  field  to  which  most  women 
would  be  assigned  in  a  manufacturing  plant." 

"Upon  leaving  college,  the  girl  who  has  spent  four  years 
specializing  in  chemistry  .  .  .  considers  herself  as  a  chem- 
ist ;  but  she  will  find  only  the  most  rudimentary  positions 
open  to  her.  She  should  have  discovered,  however,  along 
what  branches  of  chemistry  her  interest  lies,  and  for  which 
great  division  of  work — routine  or  research — she  is  best 
fitted.  Many  delude  themselves  upon  this  point.  'Routine' 
sounds  dull  and  uninteresting,  while  'research'  has  an  adven- 
turous sound.  .  .  .  Neither  is  true.  Work  in  one  field  is  no 
more  fascinating  nor  more  wearying  and  vexatious  than  in 
the  other.  But  .  .  .  different  kinds  of  people  are  required. 
The  type  of  mind  which  will  make  a  success  of  research 
is  both  logical  and  original.  ...  I  am  more  and  more  im- 
pressed with  the  fact  that  the  girl  who  wants  to  beat  a 
man  at  his  own  game  has  to  work  hard  to  do  it.  I  do  not 
believe  that  this  is  because  the  man  has  any  objection  to 
women  being  chemists.  I  do  not  believe  that  men  think 
they  are  necessarily  better  chemists  than  women.  I  have 
heard  men  give  many  reasons  why  they  do  not  want  women 
— any  woman — in  their  laboratories.  I  never  heard  one 
mention  that  he  thought  they  could  not  do  the  ordinary 
work.  His  objections  are  usually  along  the  line  that  a 
laboratory  is  a  dirty,  unattractive  place  where  hard  work 
is  done.  Its  natural  inhabitants  are  men  who  smoke,  and 
swear  when  things  go  wrong,  and  insist  on  such  natural 
prerogatives  of  menfolks.  They  don't  want  women  around 
because  they  will  try  to  reform  the  place  and  make  a  par- 
lor of  it.  Once  such  suspicions  are  at  rest,  a  rnan  is  usually 
ready  to  give  a  woman  chemist  a  chance ;  but  the  woman 
who  takes  such  a  job  must  remember  that  she  is  an  innova- 


I 


TECHNICAL  SERVICES  331 

tion,  an  experiment.  .  ,  .  And  how  do  chances  for  men 
and  women  compare?  In  a  broad  way,  I  should  say  that 
their  chances  are  equal  so  far  as  purely  chemical  positions 
go.  For  a  man,  success  in  dealing  with  chemical  problems 
may  mean  that  he  is  taken  out  of  the  laboratory  and  put 
in  charge  of  production  in  a  plant.  That  is  in  the  nature 
of  the  work  out  of  the  question  for  the  woman." 

"Chemistry  is  splendid  for  some  women,  absolutely  hope- 
less for  others.  To  be  a  success  in  chemistry  a  woman 
must  of  course  be  perfectly  honest.  You  cannot  slide  or 
bluff  results  in  an  exact  science.  She  must  not  be  afraid 
of  negative  results.  She  should  by  all  means  be  trained 
in  a  good  coeducational  institution  where  she  will  get  a 
good,  thorough  course  in  the  theories  of  chemistry  and 
will  also  be  constantly  with  men  and  learn  their  ways  of 
thinking  and  reasoning,  because  she  will  in  almost  every 
case  have  to  deal  with  men  entirely  when  she  takes  a  po- 
sition. ...  I  have  found  that  people  who  have  had  the 
experience  of  making  their  living  ,  .  .  before  entering  into 
a  permanent  position  as  a  chemist  are  more  reasonable  and 
better  fitted  to  deal  with  others.  .  .  .  My  work  is  a  wonder- 
ful training  for  any  one  who  would  care  to  go  back  into 
teaching  and  make  chemistry  a  'liver'  subject  than  it  has 
ever  been  imagined  before.    Some  day  I  may,  but  not  yet." 

"My  position  will  improve,  because  soon  we  are  to  have 
another  assistant.  It  seems  an  extremely  advantageous  time 
for  women  to  pursue  chemistry.  Recently  I  have  heard  of 
many  opportunities  for  women  in  technical  laboratories, 
whereas  two  years  ago  I  heard  of  only  two  such  positions. 
In  my  general  education  my  chemistry  has  proved  most 
helpful  directly,  mathematics  indirectly.  I  regret  that  I 
have  been  unable  to  pursue  graduate  study  of  chemistry. 
.  .  .  The  employers  seem  generally  to  use  the  method  of 
communicating  with  the  colleges  when  in  need  of  chemists 
or  with  the  employment  bureau  of  the  Chemists'  Club  in 
New  York." 

"For  bacteriological  work,  a  thorough  scientific  training 
in  biology  and  chemistry  is  necessary.  A  Ph.  D.  is  desirable, 
more  so,  I  think,  than  an  M.  D.  degree." 

Present  scientific  and  technological  opportunities  for  the 


332        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

young  college  graduate  are  illustrated  by  reports  from  Bar- 
nard, Mount  Holyoke,  Radcliffe,  and  Vassar  Colleges,  and 
the  Margaret  Morrison  Carnegie  School  of  the  Carnegie 
Institute  of  Technology,  as  to  the  occupational  distribution 
of  the  classes  of  1917  and  1918.  The  five  institutions  report 
thirty  workers  in  chemistry ;  twenty-four  in  bacteriology, 
biology,  and  physiology;  eighteen  in  engineering,  drafting, 
and  computing ;  and  six  in  applied  physics.  Seventeen  chem- 
ists held  industrial  positions,  of  whom  five  were  released 
from  war  industries  after  the  armistice.  Three  were  con- 
nected with  the  Mellon  Institute  for  Industrial  Research  in 
Pittsburgh ;  one  did  war  research  on  explosives  in  a  uni- 
versity laboratory ;  three  were  in  hospital  or  private  diag- 
nostic and  research  health  laboratories ;  five  were  teachers 
or  laboratory  assistants  in  college  departments  of  chemistry; 
one  was  teaching  chemistry  in  a  secondary  school.  Of 
the  eight  so-called  engineers,  four  were  working  on  switch- 
board specifications  and  problems  for  the  General  Electric 
Company,  having  been  given  a  special  course  of  training 
by  the  company;  two  were  in  the  Western  Electric  Com- 
pany; and  two  were  assistants  in  the  engineering  depart- 
ment of  the  American  Telephone  and  Telegraph  Company, 
receiving  training  in  the  allied  Western  Electric  Company. 
It  is  difficult  to  tell  how  much  of  their  work  is  laboratory 
testing  and  research  and  how  much  is  drafting  and  com- 
puting. It  is  likewise  difficult  to  distinguish  between  en- 
gineering workers  and  workers  in  industrial  physics.  Of 
the  three  reported  as  draftsmen,  two  were  employed  in 
the  offices  of  the  New  York  Central  Railway  Company, 
and  one  by  the  United  States  Bureau  of  Mines.  Of  the 
computers,  seven  were  employed  by  the  American  Telephone 
and  Telegraph  Company  or  the  Western  Electric.  Of  the 
physicists,  four  were  laboratory  assistants  in  the  Western 
Electric  Company ;  one  was  in  the  physical  research  labora- 
tory of  a  firm  manufacturing  tools ;  two  were  in  the  Bureau 
of  Standards  of  the  federal  Department  of  Commerce  work- 
ing on  thermal  analysis  and  radio  development  respectively ; 
one  was  a  lens  inspector  for  the  Signal  Corps  during  the 
war,  having  received  intensive  training  at  the  Bausch  & 
Lomb  factory  and  at  the  pjureau  of  Standards. 


I 


TECHNICAL  SERVICES  333 

Informal  accounts  of  their  work  are  graphic.  A  chemist 
says :     "I  have  begun  my  career  as  an  organic  chemist  in 

the     synthetic     chemistry     department     of     the     

Company.  .  .  .  Our  laboratory  is  the  only  one  of  its  kind 
in  the  country,  being  composed  entirely  of  girls  with  the 
exception  of  our  director  and  his  assistant.  They  are  from 
various  colleges  and  universities,  such  as  Chicago,  Bryn 
Mawr,  Oberlin,  and  Vassar.  .  .  .  Our  products  are  very 
valuable,  and  sold  only  in  small  quantities.  Most  of  them 
have  been  Germany's  exports  until  now." 

Another  says:  "I  am  assistant  to  the  chemist  of  a  color 
works.  I  take  great  pleasure  in  analyzing  the  chemical 
compositions  of  colors  and  in  striking  'laboratory  batches.' 
I  recently  helped  the  company  to  get  a  big  order  from  the 
Bureau  of  Engraving  and  Printing  because  I  succeeded  in 
matching  a  sample  of  purple  submitted  for  making  three- 
cent  stamps." 

Another  reports:  'T  am  working  with  a  dozen  fellow 
chemists  in  the  analytical  department  of  a  drug  company. 
.  .  .  We  examine  physically  and  chemically,  and  accept  or 
reject,  all  materials  purchased  for  manufacturing  and  all 
finished  products  of  the  company,  and  considering  the  fact 
that  we  put  out  10,000  different  preparations,  we're  busy." 

A  bacteriologist  in  charge  of  the  culture  laboratory  of  a 
great  museum  of  natural  history  says :  "We  have  a  col- 
lection of  some  six  hundred  organisms  of  all  kinds  and 
varieties,  pathogenic  and  non-pathogenic.  Our  work  is  first 
of  all  to  keep  these  alive  and  in  pure  culture.  Then  upon 
request  we  send  transfers  of  these  to  accredited  schools  and 
colleges  and  research  laboratories.  The  rest  of  our  work 
is  on  a  research  problem." 

A  "switchboard  engineer"  says :  "This  tremendous  cor- 
poration has  23,000  employees  in  these  works  alone.  I  work 
in  a  rather  large  office — the  Switchboard  Sales  Department. 
Our  work  is  both  engineering  and  commercial,  and  consists 
principally  of  drawing  specifications  for  switchboards  to 
control  all  sorts  of  electrical  apparatus,  and  then  making 
an  estimate  on  these  specifications.  There  is  a  wide  varia- 
tion between  the  different  jobs  which  come  into  the  office, 
from  a  proposition  for  a  switchboard  to  control  a  small 


334       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

motor  to  requests  for  boards  to  control  large  power  plants, 
railway  terminals,  or  the  electrical  apparatus  on  a  great 
battleship.  ...  So  far,  the  company  has  been  very  generous 
in  recognizing,  financially  and  otherwise,  any  improvement 
on  our  part,  and  I  feel  that  the  chances  for  advancement 
are  certainly  as  great  as  in  any  other  line  of  business  for 
any  one  who  will  stay  in  it." 

An  engineering  assistant  in  a  telephone  corporation  says : 
"I  plot  curves,  and  I  ink  drawings,  and  I  index  millions  of 
articles  about  radio-telegraphy  and  telephony  for  a  card- 
catalogue,  and  I  translate  French  articles  about  mercury  arcs 
and  the  aidion,  and  I  can  use  a  slide-rule  and  a  comp- 
tometer. .  .  .  Three  times  a  week  the  college  girls  in  our 
department  take  a  course  in  engineering  at  the  Western 
Electric.  In  this  way  we  are  becoming  better  able  to  handle 
problems  in  telephone  engineering  and  to  apply  our  mathe- 
matics in  correlation  with  electricity.  About  two  months 
ago  I  was  given  an  assistant  to  do  my  computing  work." 

A  physicist  says:  "I  have  a  position  in  the  physical 
research  laboratory  of  a  hammer  manufacturing  company, 
breaking  the  company's  precedent,  as  they  have  not  had  a 
woman  in  the  laboratory  before.  I  am  learning  so  much 
(especially  how  little  I  know)  that  I  am  ashamed  to  be 
drawing  a  salary.  My  work  is  never  uninteresting,  being 
research." 

Another  says:  "I  am  working  in  the  engineering  depart- 
ment of  the  National  Lamp  Works.  There  are  three  other 
college  girls  doing  work  here,  one  from  Vassar  and  two 
from  Smith.  .  .  .  The  work  our  section  does  is  planning 
illumination  'layouts'  for  buildings  of  all  kinds,  street  light- 
ing, designing  and  testing  lamps,  etc.  I  have  been  studying 
residence  lighting — they  thought  it  more  suitable  for  a  girl 
than  street  lighting." 

Still  another  says :  "I  am  in  the  Bureau  of  Standards, 
where  my  own  particular  job  is  research  on  insulating 
materials  when  subjected  to  radio  frequencies.  ...  I  have 
been  doing  some  airplaning  lately.  We  have  been  working 
on  some  landing  problems  of  the  air  mail  service,  and  I 
benefit  from  the  experimental  part,  and  go  aloft  to  receive 
signals  from  our  home  field." 


I 


TECHNICAL  SERVICES  335 

Computing  work  in  industries  and  public  utilities  is  a 
new  opening  for  college  women.  But  they  have  long  been 
employed  as  astronomical  computers  in  the  leading  ob- 
servatories of  the  country,  such  as  the  Harvard  University 
Observatory,  the  United  States  Naval  Observatory  at 
Washington,  the  Yerkes  Observatory  of  the  University  of 
Chicago,  and  the  Lick  and  Wilson  Universities  in  Califor- 
nia. This  work  requires  at  least  full  undergraduate  train- 
ing in  astronomy  and  closely  related  courses  in  mathematics. 
Laboratory  work  in  physics  and  chemistry  is  also  desirable, 
and,  as  in  all  sciences,  a  reading  knowledge  of  foreign  lan- 
guages on  the  technical  side.  Such  work  may  lead  to  re- 
search positions  in  observatories,  and  is  an  invaluable 
experience  for  later  teaching  in  college  and  university  de- 
partments of  astronomy,  if  combined  with  graduate  work. 
Positions  either  at  observatories  or  as  teachers  of  astronomy 
are  few  in  number.  The  science  has  several  aspects — mathe- 
matical astronomy,  astro-physics,  stellar  astronomy.  Stellar 
photography  is  a  field  in  which  some  women  have  spe- 
cialized. Observatory  salaries  are  not  high,  comparing  with 
those  paid  college  assistants  and  instructors  and  ranging 
from  about  $1,200  to  $1,500  or  $1,800.  The  recent  report 
on  proposed  reclassification  of  salaries  in  the  federal  civil 
service  in  Washington  ^  provides  six  classes  of  general 
astronomical  worker :  astronomical  computer ;  chief  astro- 
nomical computer;  assistant  astronomer;  associate  astrono- 
mer; astronomer;  and  senior  astronomer — and  five  classes 
of  mathematical  astronomer:  junior,  assistant,  and  associ- 
ate mathematical  astronomer ;  mathematical  and  senior  math- 
ematical astronomer.  Salaries  in  both  groups  range  from 
$1,200  to  $5,040.  Specifications  for  astronomical  computer 
and   associate   mathematical   astronomer   are    as    follows: 

COMPUTER 

Duties : 

To  perform  under  immediate  supervision,  routine  re- 
ductions in  astronomy;  and  to  perform  related  work  as 
required. 

Examples:  Reducing  transit  circle,  equatorial,  prime 
^Report  of  Congressional  Joint  Commission.    March  12,  1920. 


336       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

vertical,  alt-azimuth,  and  photographic  observations ;  com- 
puting ephemerides  and  the  orbits  of  asteroids  and  comets. 

Qualifications : 

Training  equivalent  to  that  represented  by  graduation 
from  an  institution  of  recognized  standing,  with  major 
work  in  mathematics,  mechanics,  astronomy,  and  related 
subjects;  and  ability  to  read  scientific  French  or  Ger- 
man, or  an  equivalent  foreign  language. 

Principal  Lines  of  Promotion 

To:  Assistant  Astronomer,  Chief  Astronomical  Com- 
puter. 

Compensation  for  Class 

Annual:  $1,200,  $1,320,  $1,440,  $1,560,  $1,680,  $1,800. 

ASSOCIATE  MATHEMATICAL  ASTRONOMER 

Duties : 

To  perform,  under  general  direction,  either  individually 
or  with  subordinates,  specialized  work  in  astronomical  re- 
search which  may  or  may  not  involve  supervisory  duties, 
but  does  not  include  the  determination  of  policies ;  and  to 
perform  related  work  as  required. 

Examples :  Revising  tables  of  the  sun,  moon,  and  ma- 
jor planets ;  making  and  revising  star  catalogues ;  correct- 
ing elements  of  satellite  orbits ;  preparing  data  for  eclipse 
and  longitude  expeditions ;  discussing  the  work  of  such 
expeditions. 
Qualifications : 

Training  equivalent  to  that  represented  by  graduation 
with  a  degree  from  an  institution  of  recognized  standing, 
with  major  work  in  mathematics,  mechanics,  and  related 
subjects,  by  not  less  than  three  years'  graduate  work,  and 
by  at  least  five  years'  professional  experience  in  mathe- 
matical astronomy ;  proven  ability  to  conduct  or  direct  re- 
search work  in  mathematical  astronomy;  ability  to  read 
scientific  French  or  German,  or  an  equivalent  foreign 
language ;  and  to  prepare  for  publication,  in  clear  and  con- 
cise English,  manuscripts  embodying  the  results  of  re- 
search work  in  astronomy. 


II 


TECHNICAL  SERVICES  337 

Principal  Lines  of  Promotion 

From:  Assistant  Mathematical  Astronomer. 
To:  Mathematical  Astronomer. 

Compensation  for  Class 

Annual :  $3,240,  $3,360,  $3,480,  $3,600,  $3,720,  $3,840. 


Another  field  of  applied  science  partially  at  least  opened 
to  women  by  the  war  is  that  of  geology  and  the  closely 
allied  subjects  of  geography  and  map-making.  In  the  past, 
the  amount  of  field  work  required  has  been  held  to  dis- 
qualify women,  although  a  few  are  surmounting  that  diffi- 
culty;  and  intimate  relations  with  civil  and  mining  engi- 
neering have  made  them  peculiarly  masculine  professions. 
But  the  exact  knowledge  of  topographical  and  geological 
formations  essential  to  military  operations  and  the  recent 
development  of  new  oil,  gas,  and  coal  fields  have  greatly 
increased  the  amount  and  importance  of  office  and  labora- 
tory work.  In  this  country,  we  are  just  learning  the  mean- 
ing of  geography  as  a  science  in  the  European  sense.  A  few 
women  with  college  training  in  geology  and  geography  are 
being  employed  in  the  offices  of  oil  companies  and  of  petro- 
leum and  mining  engineers.  As  usual  in  a  new  field,  they 
are  expected  to  begin  in  a  clerical  or  semi-clerical  capacity. 
An  expert  engineer,  who  is  also  professor  in  a  university 
school  of  mines,  writes  as  follows:  "It  is  quite  true  that 
women  who  major  in  geology  in  college  have  a  vocational 
opportunity  with  coal  and  oil  companies  and  experts  in 
these  fields.  Also  that  a  knowledge  of  stenography,  type- 
w^riting,  and  also  bookkeeping  gives  a  decided  advantage  in 
getting  a  start  in  such  positions.  I  have  been  seeking 
women  of  this  type  and  have  not  been  able  to  obtain  any. 
...  I  know  of  six  such  workers  in  Oklahoma  oil  com- 
panies. The  nature  of  the  work  so  far  has  been  to  make 
what  are  called  underground  structure  maps,  using  the  data 
reported  in  the  drilling  of  the  wells,  or  in  working  on  the 
appraisal  of  properties  or  on  the  rate  of  depletion  in  order 
to  establish  tax  allowance.  ...  Let  me  add  some  sugges- 


338       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

tions  as  to  the  selection  of  courses  for  such  a  person : 
physics,  chemistry,  geology,  economics,  accounting,  stenog- 
raphy, typewriting,  apflied  mathematics,  graphics,  statistics, 
filing." 

Outside  of  engineering  firms  and  industrial  corporations, 
opportunities  are  to  be  found  in  the  federal  Geological  Sur- 
vey, Bureau  of  Mines,  and  possibly  the  Coast  and  Geodetic 
Survey,  as  well  as  in  various  state  geological  surveys  and 
bureaus  of  mines.  Government  service  is  excellent  train- 
ing either  for  later  industrial  work  or  for  teaching  in  col- 
leges or  certain  secondary  schools. 

In  general,  the  specifications  of  the  scientific,  technical, 
and  statistical  services  given  in  the  Reclassification  Report 
will  prove  illuminating  and  helpful  to  women  looking  for- 
ward to  work  of  any  of  these  types  and  also  to  those  en- 
gaged in  training  them.  The  subdivisions  of  each  field  are 
notable.  The  sciences  are  grouped  under  the  biological 
science  service  and  the  physical  science  service.  The  first 
includes  specifications  for  different  classes  of  agronomists, 
anthropologists,  apiculturists,  archeologists,  general  and  soil 
bacteriologists,  aquatic  and  general  biologists,  seed  botanists, 
systematic  botanists,  plant  ecologists,  entomologists,  ethnolo- 
gists, horticulturists,  microanalysts,  microbiologists,  mycolo- 
gists, nematologists,  ornithologists,  parasitologists,  insect  and 
plant  pathologists,  plant  physiologists,  pomologists,  zoolo- 
gists! The  second  includes  besides  astronomers  and  geol- 
ogists, chemists,  metallurgists,  meteorologists,  physicists, 
and  soil  scientists.  The  engineering  service  includes  twenty- 
three  different  types  of  engineer,  from  aeronautical  to 
topographical.^  The  statistical  service  is  divided  into  me- 
chanical tabulation,  statistical  clerical  work,  and  statistical 
science.  In  all  these  services,  professional  workers  are 
ranked  as  juniors,  assistants,  associates,  full  workers,  senior 
workers,  and  chiefs  or  directors.  Scientific  and  technical 
"aids"  need  have  only  a  high-school  education,  and  are  not 
ranked  as  professional.  Salaries  for  junior  workers  are  set 
at  from  $i,8oo  to  $2,160;  for  assistants,  from  $2,400  to  $3,- 
000 ;  for  associates,  from  $3,240  to  $3,840 ;  for  full  workers, 

*  See  Report  of  Committee  of  Engineering  Council  on  Classifica- 
tion and  Compensation  of  Engineers  (Pamphlet,  1919). 


TECHNICAL  SERVICES  339 

from  $4,140  to  $5,040.  Salaries  for  senior  workers  and  for 
chiefs  are  determined  individually.  While  this  report  has 
not  yet  been  adopted  by  Congress,  it  is  based  on  careful 
study  of  current  practices,  and  reorganization  of  govern- 
ment services  is  likely  to  follow  the  lines  here  laid  down. 
Under  existing  conditions  there  are  great  variations  in 
both  titles  and  pay  in  the  different  departments  of  the  fed- 
eral government.  A  number  of  women  have  held  scientific 
and  technical  positions  under  the  government.  Since  No- 
vember 5,  1919,  all  civil  service  examinations  have  been 
open  to  them,  although  appointing  officers  may  specify 
whether  they  wish  a  man  or  a  woman.  Candidates  for  pro- 
fessional positions  under  Civil  Service  are  usually  not  re- 
quired to  present  themselves  for  examination,  but  are  rated 
upon  sworn  statements  regarding  their  education  and 
experience  and  sometimes  upon  brief  written  theses  sub- 
mitted. To  be  put  upon  an  eligible  list  by  no  means  involves 
receiving  an  appointment ;  but  conditions  are  becoming  more 
favorable  to  the  appointment  of  women,  and  those  who  are 
thoroughly  equipped  will  do  well  to  qualify.  Present  sal- 
aries compare  with  those  paid  in  colleges  and  schools.  Dur- 
ing 1919,  examinations  were  announced  for  junior  chemist 
at  a  salary  ranging  from  $1,200  to  $1,400  a  year  and  requir- 
ing college  graduation  with  a  major  in  chemistry;  associ- 
ate chemist  at  a  salary  ranging  from  $1,800  to  $2,500  and 
requiring  a  Ph.D.  degree  taken  in  one  of  eight  specified 
fields  of  chemistry;  physicist  at  a  salary  ranging  from 
$2,000  to  $2,800  and  requiring  a  master's  degree,  with  at 
least  three  years'  work  in  physics  and  in  mathematics 
through  elementary  differential  equations ;  assistant  plant 
pathologist  at  a  salary  ranging  from  $1,620  to  $2,040  and 
requiring  college  graduation  with  special  courses  in  plant 
pathology  and  a  year's  experience  in  research  or  teaching; 
research  assistant  in  agricultural  geography  at  a  salary 
ranging  from  $1,500  to  $2,000  and  requiring  college  gradua- 
tion with  special  courses  in  economics  or  agricultural  ge- 
ography, a  reading  knowledge  of  two  modern  languages, 
and  at  least  a  year  in  economic,  statistical,  or  geographical 
research;  junigr  engineer,  Grade  I.  (civil,  electrical,  me- 
chanical, signal,  structural,  telegraph  and  telephone)   at  a 


340       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

salary  ranging  from  $1,320  to  $1,680  and  requiring  profes- 
sional school  graduation  and  a  year's  experience;  assistant 
engineer  of  tests,  at  a  per  diem  rate,  requiring  graduation 
from  a  mechanical  engineering  course  with  research  work 
on  strength  of  materials,  particularly  of  steels,  copper,  and 
their  alloys ;  assistant  and  associate  technologist  at  salaries 
ranging  from  $1,400  to  $1,800  and  from  $2,000  to  $2,800  re- 
spectively and  requiring  experience  in  either  rubber,  leather, 
paper,  or  textile  technology  and  general  physics,  chemistry, 
and  mathematics ;  assistant  valuation  engineer  and  valua- 
tion engineer  at  salaries  ranging  from  $2,500  to  $3,600  and 
from  $3,600  to  $4,800  respectively,  and  requiring  ability  to 
estimate  the  value  of  mineral,  or  oil  and  gas,  or  timber,  and 
the  cost  of  the  utilization  and  exploitation  of  such  natural 
resources  and  the  completion  of  professional  courses  in 
engineering,  geology,  or  forestry.  Similar  openings  exist 
under  state  and  city  civil  service  and  in  argicultural  ex- 
periment stations. 

Drafting,  apart  from  engineering,  architecture,  or  geology, 
is  a  skilled  trade  or  a  sub-profession  rather  than  a  pro- 
fession proper.  But  in  one  or  another  of  its  many  forms, 
it  is  a  useful  tool  for  women  of  good  education  who  wish 
to  gain  a  foothold  in  the  technical  sides  of  government 
service  or  of  industry.  Drafting  is  based  on  a  sound  knowl- 
edge of  mechanical  drawing;  and  draftsmen  are  of  many 
varieties — aeronautical,  architectural,  commercial,  electri- 
cal, mechanical,  ship  and  boat,  structural,  topographical  and 
hydrographical.  ^ 

Opportunities  for  scientifically  trained  women  are  increas- 
ing in  public  and  private  health  laboratories  with  the  growth 
of  the  public  health  movement.  Chemists,  bacteriologists, 
and  pathologists  are  thus  employed.  Much  of  the  work  is 
routine  testing  and  analysis,  and  there  is  a  tendency  to  use 
women  without  advanced  scientific  training  as  "laboratory 
technicians."  But  some  of  the  state  departments  of  public 
health,  such  as  that  of  New  York,  have  been  taking  on 

*  See  Report  on  Classification  and  Compensation  of  Engineers, 
Engineering  Council  (1919),  under  sub-professional  service;  also, 
Drafting.  Opportunity  Monograph.  Federal  Board  for  Vocational 
Education  (1919). 


I 


TECHNICAL  SERVICES  341 

young  college  women  with  good  preparation  in  undergrad- 
uate science  as  apprentices  in  training;  and  the  schools  of 
public  health,  such  as  the  new  School  of  Hygiene  and  Pub- 
lic Health  of  Johns  Hopkins  University,  and  the  depart- 
ments at  Harvard  and  Yale,  are  preparing  women  for  the 
degrees  of  bachelor,  master,  or  doctor  of  public  health. 
There  is  a  difference  of  opinion  as  to  whether  these  women 
should  also  have  a  medical  degree.  For  the  present,  at 
least,  it  is  probably  an  advantage  in  their  dealings  with 
physicians.  The  Johns  Hopkins  school  arranges  with  the 
medical  school  for  the  conferring  of  both  degrees  in  five 
years.  It  offers  six  research  fellowships  with  a  stipend  of 
$1,000.  One  or  two  women  doctors  have  been  city  health 
officers,  and  a  woman  doctor  is  first  assistant  director  of 
the  great  research  laboratories  of  the  New  York  City  De- 
partment of  Health.  She  has  charge  of  three  of  the  seven 
divisions  of  the  Bureau  of  Laboratories,  and  has  done  dis- 
tinguished bacteriological  research.  A  few  women  have 
specialized  as  anesthetists  and  roentgenologists.  Here,  too, 
the  medical  degree  is  necessary  for  an  assured  status.  An 
occasional  woman  has  become  an  expert  in  medical  illus- 
trating and  modeling. 

In  other  scientific  fields,  women  hold  positions  in  museums 
of  natural  history;  in  forest  products  laboratories,  such  as 
that  at  the  University  of  Wisconsin;  as  seed  analysts  in 
large  seed  companies ;  as  textile  analysts  in  a  few  mail-order 
houses  and  large  department  stores.  One  woman  at  least 
is  food  inspector  and  tester  in  a  great  hotel.  There  are 
surprisingly  few  women  chemists  in  the  laboratories  of  food- 
products  companies,  but  they  are  being  increasingly  em- 
ployed in  nutrition  laboratories.^ 

With  the  growing  opportunities  for  women  in  the  sciences 
and  technolo.eries,  there  are  certain  considerations  to  keep  in 
mind:  (i)  The  necessity  of  mathematics  as  an  adjunct, 
including  a   knowledge   of   calculus   and   preferably   some 

'  See  Vocational  Information.  Leland  Stanford  Junior  University 
Bulletin  under  Science  and  Applied  Science.  Vocations  for  Busi- 
ness and  Professional  Women,  under  Scientific  Work. 


342       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

training  in  statistical  method.  Ability  to  use  the  comptome- 
ter and  the  sHde-rule  is  a  great  advantage;  (2)  The  im- 
portance of  a  scientific  reading  knowledge  of  modern  lan- 
guages;  (3)  The  value  of  command  of  a  related  science. 
In  industrial  and  engineering  positions,  chemistry,  and  phys- 
ics are  often  needed;  in  health,  food,  and  nutrition  labora- 
tory vi'ork,  chemistry,  bacteriolog}^  and  physiology;  (4) 
The  desirability  for  scientific  workers  in  industry,  govern- 
ment service,  or  pubHc  health,  of  an  understanding  of  eco- 
nomic, industrial,  and  social  conditions  and  problems.  Pre- 
professional  courses  in  these  subjects  should  be  taken  in 
college;  (5)  The  fact  that  if  women  are  to  win  full  pro- 
fessional status  in  these  fields,  they  must  not  rest  content 
with  intensive  courses  provided  by  the  industries  or  agencies 
themselves,  invaluable  as  these  are,  but  must  secure  thorough 
training  of  a  graduate  character  in  the  best  professional 
schools  available.  These  are  more  and  more  cooperating 
with  industries  and  other  organizations  in  the  giving  of  field 
and  shop  practice. 

Facilities  for  advanced  scientific  and  technological  train- 
ing are  open  to  women  in  practically  all  coeducational  insti- 
tutions ;  but  hitherto  only  a  handful  have  availed  themselves 
of  them.  In  many,  it  is  true,  they  have  not  been  encouraged, 
and  their  subsequent  careers  have  been  regarded  with  indif- 
ference. A  western  school  of  mines  replied  to  our  inquiry: 
"We  have  only  two  women  graduates.  We  have  no  infor- 
mation with  regard  to  the  work  they  have  done."  On  the 
other  hand,  the  dean  of  the  College  of  Civil  Engineering  of 
Cornell  University  writes :  "Up  to  the  present  time,  but 
one  young  lady  has  ever  graduated  from  here — in  1905.  At 
the  present  time  we  have  three  young  ladies  pursuing  our 
regular  four-year  course.  In  my  mind  there  is  no  doubt 
but  what  office  work  in  particular  in  engineering  can  be  done 
by  women  as  well  as  by  men  if  they  have  a  reasonably  good 
training  in  mathematics."  ^ 

Women  should  more  largely  apply  for  scientific,  indus- 

*  See  S.  C.  R.  Mann.  A  Study  of  Engineering  Education  (1918), 
Bulletin  No.  11,  Carnegie  Foundation  for  the  Advancement  of 
Teaching.  Vocational  Information.  Leland  Stanford  Junior  Uni- 
versity Bulletin,  under  Engineering. 


TECHNICAL  SERVICES  343 

trial,  and  technical  fellowships  for  which  they  can  qualify. 
Many  industries  maintain  such  fellowships  at  the  larger 
universities ;  others  exist  on  various  foundations.  The  Na- 
tional Research  Council  in  Washington  is  awarding  fellow- 
ships for  advanced  research,  and  serves  as  an  information 
bureau  regarding  such  opportunities  and  all  matters  relat- 
ing to  scientific  developments  and  applications.  In  1919 
the  American  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science 
made  a  grant  to  a  woman  for  a  piece  of  research  on  the 
mortality  statistics  of  college  women.  The  Sarah  Berliner 
Research  Fellowship  in  science  of  the  value  of  $1,000  is 
exclusively  for  women,  and  is  administered  by  the  Associa- 
tion of  Collegiate  Alumnae.  Women  should  seek  member- 
ship in  appropriate  scientific  and  technical  societies. 

Positions  are  commonly  secured  through  the  colleges  and 
professional  schools  and  through  application  to  organiza- 
tions known  to  favor  the  employment  of  women.  Occa- 
sionally, advertisement  in  scientific  or  technical  journals 
brings  results.  In  chemistry,  registration  with  the  employ- 
ment bureau  of  the  Chemists'  Club  in  New  York  is  ad- 
visable. 


The  extraordinary  development  in  recent  years  of  labora- 
tory and  observational  psychology  and  its  applications  in  the 
fields  of  education,  delinquency,  health  and  social  services, 
commerce  and  industry,  advertising  and  publicity,  warrant 
its  inclusion  in  a  chapter  devoted  to  the  professional  aspects 
of  the  sciences  and  technologies.  This  development  has 
followed  two  main  lines :  the  devising  of  mental  tests  and 
ratings  of  various  sorts  and  the  study  of  the  concrete  mani- 
festations and  bases  of  human  behavior,  especially  on  its 
abnormal  side.  The  first  originated  chiefly  in  the  testing 
of  children  by  the  Binet-Simon  intelligence  scale;  the  sec- 
ond has  a  biological  background,  and  represents  contribu- 
tions from  both  psychologists  and  psychiatrists,  the  medical 
practitioners  dealing  with  mental  diseases.  These  two  some- 
what unsympathetic  groups  are  finding  common  ground  in 
a  modified  Freudian  psychology  and  in  a  constructive  pro- 
gram for  mental  hygiene.    Together  they  are  coming  to  see 


344       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

that  the  psychological  problem  is  not  merely  the  degree  of 
mentahty,  subnormal,  normal,  and  supernormal,  but  also 
the  kind  of  mentality — emotional  and  conduct  stability,  psy- 
chopathic trends,  and  the  like.  The  army  mental  tests  fur- 
nished a  survey  on  a  nation-wide  scale  of  the  distribution  of 
persons  of  subnormal,  average,  and  superior  intelligence  ;^ 
the  treatment  of  "shell-shock"  or  "war-psychoses,"  the  first 
large-scale  popular  demonstration  of  the  principles  of  mod- 
ern psychiatry  and  mental  hygiene.  The  results  of  both  are 
being  applied  to  many  pressing  social  and  economic  prob- 
lems. Some  understanding  of  these  movements  is  coming 
to  be  expected  of  every  professional  worker,  and  there  is 
bound  to  be  an  increasing  demand  for  workers  soundly 
trained  in  the  principles  and  techniques  of  psychology  and 
psychopathology. 

Of  the  various  applications  of  psychology,  the  mental 
testing  of  school  children  is  the  oldest,  beginning  with  the 
negative  purpose  of  removing  the  feeble-minded  from  reg- 
ular classes  in  which  they  were  only  a  hindrance  and  put- 
ting them  into  special  classes  or  institutions,^  but  developing 
into  a  positive  study  of  their  capacities,  and  leading  to  the 
grouping  of  children  of  all  grades  of  intelligence  and  to 
special  methods  for  the  exceptionally  bright  as  well  as  for 
the  exceptionally  dull.  Many  city  school  systems  now  main- 
tain psychological  departments  and  psychological  clinics.  The 
first  agency  of  the  kind  was  established  in  1898  by  Professor 
Lightner  Witmer  of  the  Department  of  Psychology  of  the 
University  of  Pennsylvania.  In  other  cities,  school  children 
are  examined  and  tested  at  independent  clinics  uijder  various 
auspices — in  New  York,  for  instance,  at  the  Neurological 
Institute  and  the  Cornell  Clinic  of  Psychopathology;  in 
Louisville,  Kentucky,  in  the  psychological  clinic  recently 
established  jointly  by  the  board  of  education  and  the  feder- 
ated social  agencies.  This  clinic  examines  both  superior  and 
inferior  children  for  admission  to  special  classes.  In  some 
cities  clinics  are  combined  with  school  vocational  bureaus, 

^  See  C.  E.  Yoakum  and  R.  M.  Yerkes.  Army  Mental  Tests 
(1920).    Mental  Hygiene.    Passim  1918 — . 

*  See  Leta  S.  Hollingworth.  The  Psychology  of  Subnormal 
Children    (1920). 


TECHNICAL  SERVICES  345 

as  in  Cincinnati,  where  Dr.  Helen  Bradford  Woolley  has 
made  notable  studies  in  the  vocational  psychology  of 
young  people.  Psychological  clinics  have  also  long  been 
maintained  at  such  well-known  schools  for  the  feeble-minded 
as  those  at  Waverley,  Massachusetts,  and  Vineland,  New 
Jersey.  A  more  recent  development  is  the  establishment  of 
school  clinics  in  mental  hygiene  and  the  instruction  of  teach- 
ers and  parents  in  its  principles,  as  has  been  done  in  Balti- 
more by  Dr.  C.  MacFie  Campbell  of  Johns  Hopkins  Uni- 
versity, now  of  the  Harvard  Medical  School,  and  in 
Worcester  by  Prof.  William  T.  Burnham  of  Clark  Univer- 
sity. The  new  realization  of  the  importance  of  the  mental 
and  emotional  experiences  of  childhood  as  determining 
mental  health  throughout  life  make  this  a  field  of  work  that 
demands  extension  and  continuous  study.^  It  is  still  in  its 
infancy. 

Psychologists  are  also  attached  to  state  and  city  boards 
and  bureaus  dealing  with  juveniles.  Ohio  has  established 
a  juvenile  research  bureau  with  a  psychological  staff.  Wis- 
consin has  a  psychologist  on  its  state  department  of  educa- 
tion. Child  welfare  institutions  and  agencies  of  every  sort 
are  seeking  psychological  assistance. 

A  special  type  of  psychological  work  with  minors  has 
been  that  of  the  juvenile  court  and  institutions  for  juvenile 
delinquents.  In  this  field,  Dr.  William  Healy,  long  director 
of  the  psychological  laboratory  of  the  Chicago  juvenile  court 
and  now  director  of  the  Judge  Baker  Foundation  in  Boston, 
has  been  a  distinguished  leader.  His  work  on  the  juvenile 
delinquent  shows  the  intimate  relations  of  mental  defect  and 
disorder  to  the  whole  matter  of  delinquency.-  A  number  of 
juvenile  courts  now  have  psychologists  attached  to  them. 

The  demonstration  through  mental  tests  that  mental  and 
physical  or  chronological  age  often  do  not  coincide,  and  that 
a  seeming  adult  may  have  a  mind  of  twelve  years  or  less, 
has  led  to  the  application  of  these  tests  to  delinquents,  de- 
pendents, and  unadjusted  adults  of  all  kinds,  and  especially 

*See  Dr.  William  A.  White.  The  Mental  Hygiene  of  Child- 
hood (iQip)- 

"T/te  Individual  Delinquent  (1915)  ;  Mental  ConHicts  and  Miscon- 
duct (1917). 


34^       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

to  wayward,  border-line,  or  delinquent  women  and  girls, 
who  are  a  peculiar  menace  to  society.  Psychologists  are 
attached  to  courts,  prisons,  and  reformatories,  to  state  prison 
commissions  and  boards  of  probation  and  parole,  to  pro- 
tective leagues,  social  and  mental  hygiene  associations.  With 
adults,  as  with  children,  it  is  coming  to  be  seen  clearly  that 
adequate  handling  of  the  situation  requires  the  cooperation 
of  the  psychologist,  the  psychiatrist,  and  the  mental  hygiene 
or  psychiatric  social  worker. 

This  new  type  of  social  worker  is  described  in  Chapter  V. 
As  yet,  she  is  more  commonly  trained  in  social  work  than 
in  psychology;  but  one  of  the  most  successful  women  in 
this  field  is  a  doctor  of  philosophy  in  psychology;  and  sound 
modern  psychological  training  is  likely  to  become  a  requi- 
site. Psychiatrists  also  lack  training  in  psycholog}^  and 
are  consequently  too  much  inclined  to  consider  the  abnormal 
apart  from  the  normal.  But  plans  are  now  on  foot  for 
providing  some  training  in  both  psychology  and  psychiatry 
for  all  medical  students  and  simple,  practical  courses  in 
psychology  and  psychopathology  in  schools  of  social  work 
and  nursing.  Psychologists  as  well  as  psychiatrists  are  at- 
tached to  the  staffs  of  mental  and  psychopathic  hospitals. 
In  fact,  every  institution  or  organization  concerned  with  the 
care  of  the  sick  needs  an  expert  in  psychology  and  mental 
hygiene,  since  all  forms  of  disease  and  injury  have  their 
special  mental  and  emotional  aspects.  This  has  been  recog- 
nized by  the  War  Department  and  the  Red  Cross,  which 
have  employed  psychiatric  social  workers  not  only  with 
mental  cases  proper  but  with  other  injured  soldiers.  The 
Red  Cross  has  sent  workers  to  the  Smith  School  and  other 
schools. 

The  most  recent  applications  of  psychology  are  in  the  field 
of  occupations  and  employment.  "Personnel"  oc  "employ- 
ment" psycholog}'  has  to  do  especially  with  the  devising  of 
tests  and  techniques  to  determine  special  aptitudes,  training, 
and  fitness  for  employment  and  promotion,  under  the  aus- 
pices of  personnel  or  employment  departments,  as  described 
in  Chapter  XI.^    In  the  larger  sense,  occupational  or  voca- 

*  See  Henry  C.  Link.  Employment  Psychology  (1919).  Per- 
sonnel System  of  the  U.  S.  Army.    Two  vols.  (1919). 


TECHNICAL  SERVICES  347 

tional  psychology  touches  many  sides  of  educational  and 
social  work :  vocational  guidance,  vocational  education, 
"labor  turnover,"  and  so  on.  Specific  vocational  tests  are 
more  difficult  to  devise  than  "general  intelligence"  tests,  and 
have  not  been  so  satisfactorily  worked  out.  There  is  a 
tendency  to  rely  more  upon  objective  "performance"  or 
"trade"  tests  than  upon  psychological  tests  proper.^  There 
are  still  many  problems  to  be  dealt  with  in  the  psychology 
of  professions  and  other  occupations.  But  active  research 
is  going  on  in  the  entire  field.  With  regard  to  industrial 
and  other  occupational  maladjustments,  hopeful  beginnings 
of  investigation  have  been  made  under  the  auspices  of  the 
Boston  Psychopathic  Hospital  and  the  Engineering  Founda- 
tion. Industrial  mental  hygiene  clinics  are  advocated.  Much 
more  needs  to  be  known  regarding  both  the  external  con- 
ditions and  the  psychology  of  occupations  before  "vocational 
guidance"  can  be  put  on  a  sound  basis.  It  has  been  too 
often  a  matter  of  pious  hope  or  of  blind  acceptance  of 
things  as  they  are  industrially. 

The  applications  of  psychology  to  educational  problems 
have  long  been  a  matter  of  theory,  if  not  of  practice.  The 
fault  has  lain  largely  with  the  type  of  psychology  offered. 
The  newer  psychology  is  making  them  effectual  and  valu- 
able. The  uses  of  psychology  in  advertising,  publicity,  and 
salesmanship  have  been  admirably  pointed  out  and  acted 
upon.2  The  psychologist  is  coming  to  be  a  cooperating  or 
consulting  expert  in  practically  all  fields  of  social  endeavor. 
He — or  frequently  she — assists  the  teacher,  the  judge,  the 
doctor,  the  social  worker,  the  employer,  and  the  employed. 
"Americanization"  work  needs  psychologists  who  are  spe- 
cialists in  the  psycholog}'  of  racial  groups  and  racial  rela- 
tions. Health  centers  should  include  psychological  and 
mental  hygiene  clinics,  thus  dissipating  the  distrust  still 
felt  for  such  clinics  when  under  the  auspices  of  mental  hos- 
pitals or  boards. 

Field  workers  in  eugenics,   who  are  trained   chiefly  at 

*  See  Henry  C.  Link.  Employment  Psychology  (1919).  Per- 
sonnel System  of  the  U.  S.  Army.     Two  vols.   (1919). 

*See  Walter  Dill  Scott,  Psychology  of  Advertising  (1913).  Harry 
A.  Hollingworth.     Advertising  and  Selling  (1913). 


348       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

the  Eugenics  Record  Office  of  the  Carnegie  Station  for  Ex- 
perimental Evolution  at  Cold  Spring  Harbor,  Long  Island, 
need  a  foundation  in  psychology  as  well  as  in  zoology,  since 
their  work  iconsists  chiefly  in  securing  farryly  histories  and 
data  regarding  the  inmates  of  mental  hospitals  and  institu- 
tions for  the  feeble-minded. 

The  present  interest  in  "mental  tests"  sometimes  leads 
people  to  think  that  the  planning  and  giving  of  such  tests 
is  the  only  work  of  the  psychologist.  It  is  important  to 
remember  that  testing  is  one  among  many  psychological 
techniques  and  fields.  The  person  specializing  in  this  work 
is  known  as  a  psychological  examiner.  A  Report  on  the 
Qualifications  of  Psychological  Examiners  has  been  pre- 
pared by  a  committee  of  the  American  Psychological  Asso- 
ciation, ^  and  plans  are  under  way  for  the  certification  by 
the  Association  of  two  grades  of  examiners:  (i)  those  with 
the  Ph.D.  degree  and  (2)  those  with  but  one  year  of  gradu- 
ate work.  There  is  an  Association  of  Clinical  Psycholo- 
gists ;  and  a  few  women  with  this  training  are  in  independ- 
ent practice.  In  so  new  and  so  easily  exploited  a  field,  there 
is  bound  to  be  a  "charlatan  fringe,"  and  psychologists  them- 
selves, if  not  the  state,  are  likely  to  devise  some  form  of 
regulating  such  practitioners.  Psychiatrists  are  very  wary 
of  the  non-medical  "psycho-analyst." 

No  psychologist  at  this  juncture  can  afiford  professional 
training  other  than  the  best.  Undergraduate  courses,  even 
those  including  laboratory  work  and  training  in  testing,  are 
sufficient  only  for  routine  or  subordinate  positions.  Some- 
times a  year  or  so  of  work  of  this  type  enables  a  young 
woman  to  give  direction  to  her  graduate  study.  The  woman 
looking  forward  to  a  professional  career  as  a  psychologist 
should  plan  to  secure  a  doctor's  degree  from  one  of  the  uni- 
versities which  are  leaders  in  this  field.  In  certain  types 
of  work,  she  may  find  it  advantageous  also  to  have  a  medical 
degree.    Workers  intending  to  specialize  in  vocational  guid- 

*  Psychological  Monograph  Series  (1921).  See  also  J.  E.  W. 
Wallin.  The  Field  of  the  Clinical  Psychologist  and  the  Kind  of 
Training  Needed  by  the  Psychological  Examiner.  School  and  So- 
ciety. April  19,  1919.  Vocational  Information.  Leland  Stanford 
Junior  University  Bulletin,  under  Psychological  Examiner. 


TECHNICAL  SERVICES  349 

ance,  mental  hygiene,  social  work,  pers-onnel  work,  or 
teaching  should  have  at  least  the  psychological  equipment 
represented  by  the  master's  degree,  supplemented  by  courses 
in  psychiatric  social  work,  employment  management,  educa- 
tion, and  so  on.  Undergraduate  courses  in  social  economy, 
biology,  history,  and  government  are  an  important  pre- 
professional  foundation. 

Positions  in  psychology  are  at  present  most  commonly 
secured  through  the  institutions  and  departments  in  which 
a  worker  has  studied.  These  include  teaching  and  labora- 
tory positions  in  colleges,  and  normal  schools,  which  are 
becoming  more  numerous  and  often  afford  opportunity 
for  further  research.  Direct  application  sometimes  brings 
results,  if  done  with  knowledge  of  the  field.  There  are  civil 
service  examinations  for  psychologists  in  some  of  the  states 
for  positions  in  state  institutions  or  departments. 

Seven  psychologists  filled  our  schedules,  and  certain  col- 
leges supplied  information  regarding  graduates  of  191 7  and 
1918  in  psychological  work.  Salaries  reported  ranged  from 
$1,200  to  $3,000  with  a  median  salary  of  $2,100.  Six  out 
of  the  seven  psychologists  have  the  doctor's  degree ;  the 
other  has  a  master's  degree.  Two  are  professors  of  psy- 
chology in  universities.  One  of  these  has  been  clinical 
psychologist  in  a  large  hospital,  and  still  gives  some  time  to 
the  work.  The  other  has  been  director  of  an  experimental 
psychological  laboratory  in  connection  with  a  reformatory 
for  women,  and  was  attached  to  the  division  of  psychology 
of  the  Surgeon  General's  Office  during  the  war.  Two  are 
connected  with  city  departments  of  education,  one  as  di- 
rector of  a  vocational  bureau  ;  the  other  as  assistant  director 
of  a  department  of  child  study.  One  is  chief  psychologist 
in  a  large  state  school  for  the  feeble-minded;  one  gives 
mental  tests  to  school  children  in  a  state  bureau  of  juvenile 
research ;  one  is  social  service  director  of  a  state  mental 
hygiene  committee,  doing  special  work  with  children. 

Comments  are  as  follows:  "Do  not  consider  for  a  mo- 
ment a  career  in  psychology  without  full  professional  equip- 
ment. Be  sure  that  you  have  the  innate  capacity  for  suc- 
cess in  a  professional  career.  Take  a  doctor's  degree  in 
psychology.    This  means  three  years  of  training  beyond  the 


350       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

B.A.  degree.  .  .  .  From  thirty  to  forty  women  consult  me 
each  year  about  entering  upon  a  career  in  psychology.  There 
are,  in  general,  two  discouraging  features  in  these  consulta- 
tions. In  the  first  place,  there  are  always  some  who  are 
not  fitted  to  enter  upon  a  professional  career  of  any  kind. 
Either  they  lack  ability,  are  unfortunate  in  personality,  or 
are  past  the  age  for  beginning.  ...  In  the  second  place, 
there  is  an  invincible  amateurishness  in  the  viewpoint  of 
many,  a  desire  to  'take  up'  something  which  can  be  learned 
in  a  year,  and  which  will  thereafter  give  them  position  and 
income.  Very  few  seem  willing  to  face  real  professional 
training  as  a  sine  qua  non  of  a  professional  career  in  psy- 
chology. They  labor  under  the  erroneous  impression  that 
there  must  be  some  way  of  obtaining  the  rewards  without 
paying  the  price  of  thorough  preparation.  This  fatal  ten- 
dency to  fall  short  of  what  is  necessary  to  success  is  due 
largely,  in  my  judgment,  to  the  uncertainty  which  women 
feel  about  choosing  between  (or  possibly  combining)  mar- 
riage and  vocation." 

"I  would  advise  the  highest  possible  training  in  psychol- 
ogy* pedagogy,  and  child  hygiene ;  practical  experience  in 
institutions  for  defectives ;  conservative  use  of  diagnosis ; 
and  keeping  in  constant  touch  with  new  experimental  (not 
applied)  findings,  as  well  as  with  clinical  developments." 

Two  women's  colleges  report  eleven  of  their  graduates  of 
1917  and  1918  in  psychological  work.  Of  these,  three  are 
college  laboratory  assistants;  two  are  in  the  vocational  bu- 
reau of  a  city  school  system ;  two  are  giving  psychological 
tests  in  hospital  clinics ;  one  is  psychological  assistant  in  a 
state  children's  bureau ;  one  is  research  worker  in  a  state 
school  for  the  feeble-minded ;  one  is  experimental  psycholo- 
gist in  a  life  insurance  company;  one  is  assistant  psycholo- 
gist in  a  department  store. 

One  worker  says :  "All  last  year  I  was  a  laboratory  as- 
sistant at  the  psychological  laboratory  of  the  vocational 
bureau  of  the  board  of  education.  We  tested  children  for 
the  special  classes  of  the  public  schools — classes  for  de- 
fectives, for  the  backward,  for  the  slow  in  learning  to  read, 
and  rapidly  moving  classes  for  the  brilliant.  We  also  did 
psychological  examining  for  the  social  agencies  and  for  any 


I 


TECHNICAL  SERVICES  351 

one  else  who  wanted  it  done.  Boys  are  brought  because 
they  play  hookey  from  school ;  girls  because  they  lose  their 
tempers  or  like  to  stay  out  late.  We  also  examine  and  try 
to  advise  many  economic  misfits." 

Statistical  services  may  be  briefly  treated,  although  they 
are  becoming  increasingly  important  in  all  fields,  in  indus- 
try and  commerce,  in  life  insurance,  in  public  utilities,  as 
well  as  in  economics,  the  sciences,  and  education.  It  is  be- 
coming fashionable  for  workers  to  call  themselves  "statis- 
ticians," and  there  is  need  to  emphasize  the  difference  be- 
tween statistical  clerks,  who  make  routine  tabulations  and 
computations  under  direction,  and  statisticians  proper.  Only 
the  latter  are  to  be  considered  professional  workers,  al- 
though a  woman  of  good  education  may  profitably  serve  a 
"sub-professional"  apprenticeship  as  a  statistical  clerk,  and 
has  an  advantage  if  she  is  familiar  with  the  operation  of 
tabulating  and  punching  machines.  Familiarity  with  the 
techniques  of  "graphics" — the  making  of  graphs  and  charts 
— is  also  valuable.^ 

The  Reclassification  Report,  as  has  been  said,  divides  gov- 
ernment statistical  service  into  (i)  mechanical  tabulation, 
(2)  statistical  clerical  work,  and  (3)  statistical  science.  To 
illustrate  the  distinction  between  clerical  and  professional 
statistical  work  specifications  are  quoted  for  senior  statisti- 
cal clerk  and  for  associate  statistician. 

SENIOR  STATISTICAL  CLERK  (Agriculture,  Finance, 
Transportation) . 

Duties : 

Under  supen^ision,  to  perform  one  or  more  of  the  fol- 
lowing functions:  (i)  To  supervise  a  small  statistical 
clerical  subdivision  performing  a  single  process  or  group  ^ 
of  simple  related  processes,  according  to  general  plans 
and  instructions  laid  down  by  an  official  superior;  (2)  To 
perform  statistical  clerical  work  demanding  a  knowledge 
of  the  subject  matter  and  the  exercise  of  statistical  judg- 
ment;— and  to  perform  other  related  work. 

*  See  Allan  C.  Haskell.  Hoiv  to  Make  and  Use  Graphic  Charts 
(1919).  Willard  C.  Brinton.  Graphic  Methods  for  Prcscntiiuj  Facts 
(1914). 


352       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

Examples:  Examining  complicated  reports,  schedules, 
and  other  papers  to  determine  their  accuracy  and  to  pre- 
pare them  for  tabulation ;  making,  independently,  ordinary 
computations  of  averages,  medians,  and  rates,  including, 
when  necessary,  the  use  of  computing  machines,  verify- 
ing tables  where  the  process  requires  not  only  checking 
the  accuracy  of  the  copying  and  compiling  of  the  figures, 
but  their  proper  selection,  combination,  and  tabulation. 
Common  Qualifications: 

Training  equivalent  to  that  represented  by  graduation 
from  high  school ;  not  less  than  two  years'  experience 
in  statistical  clerical  work,  or  one  year's  such  experience 
and  the  completion  of  an  elementary  course  in  statistical 
methods  in  an  institution  of  recognized  standing;  famil- 
iarity with  adding,  computing,  and  tabulating  machines, 
slide  rules,  and  other  labor-saving  devices  used  in  statis- 
tical clerical  work ;  ability  to  plan  ordinary  table  forms 
and  to  write  explanatory  notes ;  accuracy,  neatness,  rapid- 
ity, and  mental  alertness. 

Special  Qualifications: 

For  each  class  in  the  group,  thorough  clerical  knowl- 
edge of  the  subject  matter  to  which  the  statistics  involved 
relate,  as  indicated  by  the  title  of  that  class. 

Principal  Lines  of  Promotion 

From :  Junior  Statistical  Clerk. 
To  :  Principal  Statistical  Clerk. 

Compensation  for  Classes  in  Group 

Annual:  $1,620,  $1,680,  $1,740,  $1,800. 
ASSOCIATE  STATISTICIAN 

Duties : 

To  direct  minor  statistical  inquiries  along  lines  already 
established,  wherein  matters  of  policy  regarding  organiza- 
tion and  management  do  not  frequently  arise  or  are  de- 
cided by  or  on  the  advice  of  an  administrative  superior, 
and  where  the  technique  and  methods  of  analysis  have 
been  standardized ;  under  general  direction,  to  supervise 
the  conduct  of  a  minor  investigation  or  part  of  a  major 


TECHNICAL  SERVICES  353 

investigation,  and  to  originate  and  suggest  to  administra- 
tive superiors  plans  of  organization,  management,  tech- 
nique, and  methods  of  analysis ;  to  carry  on,  independent- 
ly, or  with  assistants,  statistical  research  not  demanding 
at  the  outset  broad  and  intensive  knowledge  of  the  subject 
or  related  subjects;  and  to  perform  related  work  as  re- 
quired. 

Examples:  Under  general  direction,  supervising  the 
regular  collection  and  tabulation  of  statistics,  and  analyz- 
ing the  results  thereof  relating  to  union  wages,  whole- 
sale prices,  or  to  the  production  of  cotton,  truck,  or  other 
special  crops ;  planning  and  advising  in  respect  to,  and 
analyzing  the  results  of  censuses  of  important  industries, 
such  as  iron  and  steel,  or  textiles ;  preparing  statistical 
memoranda  or  reports  or  sections  or  chapters  in  impor- 
tant statistical  publications  involving  thorough  individual 
research. 

Qualifications : 

Training  equivalent  to  that  represented  by  graduation 
with  a  degree  from  an  institution  of  recognized  standing, 
and  by  at  least  three  years'  graduate  study  in  the  field 
of  economics,  sociology,  political  science,  statistics,  mathe- 
matics, or  other  related  subjects ;  and  either  not  less  than 
two  years'  experience  in  statistics  or  related  social  sciences 
or  success  in  independent  original  statistical,  economic,  or 
sociological  research,  as  shown  by  writings  and  publica- 
tions. 

Principal  Lines  of  Promotion 

From:   Assistant   Statistician. 
To:  Statistician. 

Compensation  for  Class 
Annual:  $3,240,  $3,360,  $3,480,  $3,600,  $3,720,  $3,840. 

Advanced  training  in  statistics  is  more  and  more  in  terms 
of  special  fields — vital  statistics,  educational  statistics,  social 
statistics,  economic  and  industrial  statistics.^    Even  the  ele- 

*  See  Melvin  T,  Copeland.  Business  Statistics  (iQi?)-  J-  George 
Frederick.  Business  Research  and  Statistics  (19-^0).  Horace  Se- 
crist.  An  Introduction  to  Statistics  (1919)  and  Readings  and  Prob- 
lems in  Statistical  Methods  (1920). 


354       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

mentary  college  courses,  usually  given  under  the  depart- 
ments of  economics  and  mathematics,  while  they  give  a 
survey  of  all  types  of  data  which  may  be  treated  statistically, 
tend  to  assign  statistical  problems  to  students  in  the  field 
of  their  major  subjects.  Opportunities  for  field  work  and 
apprentice  work  are  beginning  to  be  found  in  some  of  the 
great  insurance,  public  utility,  and  other  commercial  and 
industrial  organizations.  The  American  Statistical  Asso- 
ciation is  the  professional  society.  Positions  are  secured 
through  civil-service  examinations,  through  bureaus  of  oc- 
cupations, or  through  direct  application.  The  true  statis- 
tician, as  distinct  from  the  statistical  clerk,  is  problem- 
minded  as  well  as  fact-minded,  capable  of  planning  investi- 
gations, devising  effective  tabulations,  and  interpreting  re- 
sults. He  belongs  to  professional  associations,  and  pub- 
lishes statistical  articles. 

Advance  information  regarding  eleven  women  engaged 
wholly  or  partly  in  statistical  work,  received  from  the  Bu- 
reau of  Vocational  Information,  ^  shows  a  salary  range  of 
from  $1,400  to  $5,000,  with  a  median  salary  of  $2,400. 
Only  one  salary  reported  is  below  $2,000.  Of  these  women, 
one  has  a  doctor's  degree  in  economics  and  sociology;  two 
have  the  master's  degree ;  four  have  the  bachelor's  degree 
with  special  professional  training  of  at  least  a  year;  two 
are  without  degrees,  but  have  taken  courses  at  a  normal 
school,  a  university,  and  a  college  of  law  respectively.  Three 
are  employed  by  the  federal  government,  of  whom  one  is 
head  of  a  division  in  the  Bureau  of  Internal  Revenue;  one  is 
in  the  Bureau  of  the  Census,  and  one  is  in  the  Port  and  Zone 
Transportation  Office  in  New  York.  Three  are  with  sta- 
tistical and  research  organizations ;  one  is  with  a  philan- 
thropic foundation;  one  is  a  statistical  and  economic 
research  worker  for  the  Young  Women's  Christian  Associa- 
tion, one  is  head  of  the  department  of  statistics  and  investi- 
gation of  an  advertising  company,  one  is  with  a  silk  manu- 
facturing company,  one  assistant  in  the  safety  engineering 
department  of  a  great  chemical  company,  one  is  head  of 
the  research  department  of  a  great  labor  union.  Several 
receiving  the  highest  salaries  had  important  statistical  ex- 

*  See  Statistical  Work  for  Women.    Bulletin  No.  2  (1921). 


1 


TECHNICAL  SERVICES  355 

perience  during  the  war  with  the  War  Industries  Board,  the 
Shipping  Board,  and  the  Food  Administration.  One  has 
done  responsible  work  for  the  New  York  City  Board  of 
Estimate  and  Apportionment.  Several  say  that  women  re- 
ceive as  much  as  fifty  per  cent  lower  salaries  than  men,  and 
are  seldom  employed  in  executive  positions.  One  says  that 
the  best  positions  are  to  be  found  under  the  government 
or  "on  the  Street."  One  advises  statisticians  to  do  a  certain 
amount  of  their  own  tabulating  in  order  to  keep  in  personal 
touch  with  the  data.  Statisticians  are  frequently  employed 
on  a  "piece-work"  basis,  in  connection  with  surveys  and 
other  special  investigations. 

Three  women  statisticians  filling  our  schedules  in  1918 
and  1919  reported  salaries  of  $1,500,  $1,800,  and  $2,400. 
One  is  statistician  for  a  national  medical  and  health  organi- 
zation; one  is  administrative  assistant  to  a  statistical  execu- 
tive in  the  Shipping  Board;  one  was  chief  of  the  section 
on  war  industries  abroad  of  the  Wa^  Industries  Board,  and 
assisted  in  preparing  a  report  on  international  price  com- 
parisons, part  of  a  history  of  prices  during  the  war.  Two 
are  college  graduates,  one  with  a  master's  degree  and  one 
with  a  secretarial  course  at  Simmons  College ;  one  has  had 
special  university  courses  in  statistics.  None  of  them  is 
much  over  thirty. 

One  says :  "It  would  seem  to  me  that  a  year's  statistical 
work  in  government  service  is  invaluable  in  learning  sources 
and  methods.  I  believe  that  a  woman  will  advance  farthest 
if  she  decides  in  what  field  she  will  apply  her  statistical 
knowledge,  and  does  not  consider  statistics  as  ends  in  them- 
selves." 

Another  says :  "My  chief  prefers  women  to  men  in  sta- 
tistical work,  other  than  in  important  executive  positions.  I 
should  advise  women  to  take  as  much  training  as  possible, 
of  course,  to  have  a  liking  for  work  and  a  willingness  to 
work  until  all  hours.  A  letter  from  an  influential  college 
instructor  carries  more  weight  than  college  credits,  and  a 
recommendation  from  a  satisfied  employer  is  worth  any 
number  of  courses  in  training.  Women  are  not  a  good  in- 
vestment.    They  are  too  apt  to  marry." 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

LIBRARY   AND    MUSEUM    SERVICES 

Libraries  and  museums  have,  broadly  speaking,  a  com- 
mon purpose :  the  procuring,  housing,  arranging,  and  render- 
ing accessible  of  materials  for  the  information,  aesthetic  sat- 
isfaction, or  recreation  of  the  community  or  some  of  its 
component  groups.  Both  deal  with  spatial  objects,  and  have 
developed  techniques  of  purchase,  storage,  classification, 
and  identification.  Both  are  giving  increased  attention  to 
methods  of  exhibition  and  instruction.  While  the  library  is 
far  in  advance  of  the  museum  in  the  active  distribution  and 
circulation  of  its  collections  among  the  people,  the  museum 
is  moving  in  this  direction  as  far  as  the  nature  of  museum 
objects  permits.  Both  institutions  are  fundamentally  edu- 
cational, and  in  the  most  enlightened  instances  are  close 
students  of  their  publics,  allying  themselves  with  other  com- 
munity agencies  of  an  educational  character  and  making 
active  efforts  to  reach  and  serve  groups  of  different  ages, 
races,  occupations,  and  interests.  They  are  thus  centers  of 
educational  cooperation  and  publicity,  and  perform  a  social 
service  the  importance  of  which  we  are  only  coming  to 
realize. 

Compared  wath  the  learned  professions  and  with  teaching, 
librarianship  is  a  young  profession,  dating  back  not  more 
than  thirty  years.  Like  teaching  it  suffers  from  containing 
within  its  ranks  many  untrained  or  partially  trained  workers 
whose  presence  blurs  professional  standards  and  lowers  the 
whole  scale  of  professional  salaries.  There  is  an  active 
movement  among  librarians  at  present  looking  to  some  sys- 
tem of  professional  standardization  and  certification.  On 
the  other  hand,  like  most  occupations  that  have  struggled  to 
achieve  professional  status,  librarianship  has  been  not  un- 

356 


II 


LIBRARY  AND  MUSEUM  SERVICES         357 

fairly  accused  of  a  certain  stiffness  and  overemphasis  of 
mere  techniques  to  the  neglect  of  more  fundamental  pro- 
fessional characteristics.  ^  This  criticism  has  already  an 
archaic  ante-bellum  sound.  What  the  War  Service  Com- 
mittee of  the  American  Library  Association  did  for  our 
soldiers  and  sailors  at  home  and  overseas,  in  cantonments 
and  rest  areas,  on  transports  and  on  warships,  is  a  noble 
record.  What  it  did  for  the  library  profession  in  the  way 
of  increased  flexibility  and  simplifying  of  methods  and  un- 
derstanding of  American  young  people  and  hearty  com- 
munity cooperation  for  definite  ends,  only  the  coming  years 
will  reveal.  Since  the  end  of  the  war,  the  Association  has 
been  conducting  an  active  campaign  to  recruit  young  men 
and  young  women  for  librarianship,  to  raise  salary  stand- 
ards, and  to  extend  free  public  library  facilities  to  the  sixty 
million  Americans  which  it  estimates  are  now  without 
them. 

In  spite  of  their  inadequacy,  however,  libraries  are  so 
widely  diffused  throughout  the  United  States  that  librarian- 
ship,  like  teaching,  may  be  considered  a  "constant"  rather 
than  a  "variable"  occupation,  to  use  the  terms  of  Dr.  Leon- 
ard P.  Ayres.-  Like  teaching  also,  it  is  actually  or 
practically  a  form  of  public  service,  since  Hbraries  are 
democratic  institutions  serving  disinterestedly  and  impar- 
tially all  elements  in  the  community.  Thirty-seven  states 
have  library  commissions  or  state  Hbraries  with  extension 
arrangements,  to  bring  library  facilities  to  country  com- 
munities and  to  maintain  common  standards.  These 
bodies  have  formed  a  League  of  Library  Commissions. 
California  and  Indiana  have  especially  good  systems  of 
county  libraries.  A  banker  of  New  York  City  has  recently 
made  a  gift  of  eleven  library  buildings  with  a  yearly  in- 
come of  a  thousand  dollars  each  on  condition  of  an  equal 
sum  raised  by  taxation,  for  rural  districts  in  northern 
New  York.  The  new  interest  in  rural  problems  makes  the 
country  library  an  institution  of  strategic  importance,  co- 

*See  John  Cotton  Dana.  The  Changing  Character  of  Libraries. 
Atlantic  Monthly.     April,  1918. 

*  Constant  and  Variable  Occupations  in  Bloomficld's  Readings  in 
Vocational  Guidance  (1914). 


358       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

operating  with  the  schools,  the  county  farm  bureaus,  the 
agencies  for  rural  health,  and  so  on.  Hitherto  the  salaries 
paid  have  been  too  small  for  such  libraries  to  command 
professional  librarians ;  before  long  the  state  may  see  its 
way  to  supplementing  local  library  funds.  Motor  vans  are 
making  a  traveling  library  service  possible.  ^ 

The  Board  of  Regents  of  the  University  of  the  State  of 
New  York,  the  state  professional  examining  and  licensing 
board,  adopted  in  1918  a  system  of  grading  and  certifying 
high  school  librarians  on  principles  analogous  to  those  used 
with  respect  to  teachers.  The  New  York  Library  Associa- 
tion has  drafted  a  plan  for  extending  this  system  of  stand- 
ardization and  certification  to  public  librarians  in  places 
with  a  population  of  3,000  or  over.  It  provides  for  four 
grades  of  certificate — life,  five-year,  three-year,  and  two- 
year,  valid  in  communities  of  different  sizes,  and  makes  spe- 
cific requirements  of  general  education,  library  training,  and 
library  experience.  Various  other  states  and  the  American 
Library  Association  have  long  been  urging  some  such  plan. 

Libraries  may  be  classified  as  pubhc,  institutional,  special, 
and  private.  There  are  a  few  cooperative  libraries,  open 
only  to  members.  The  great  majority  are  public,  controlled 
by  boards  of  trustees  and  supported  wholly  or  partially  by 
taxation.  The  tendency  among  benevolent  citizens  to  pre- 
sent communities  with  expensive  library  buildings  without 
funds  for  their  maintenance  and  operation  is  fortunately 
giving  way  to  the  realization  that  the  best  library  is  the  one 
most  actively  administered  and  most  actively  supported  by 
the  community.  Librarians  are  likely  in  the  near  future 
to  follow  the  lead  of  teachers  in  asking  for  representation 
upon  boards  of  library  control.  Institutional  libraries  are 
no  longer  limited  to  universities,  colleges,  and  professional 
schools.  The  high  school  library  is  a  recent  growth  full  of 
vigor  and  of  special  appeal  to  librarians  qualified  to  deal 
with  growing  boys  and  girls.  Modern  hospitals  for  physical 
and  mental  diseases  recognize  the  library  as  of  definite  ther- 
apeutic value;  and  there  is  a  special  association  of  hospi- 
tal librarians.     Other  institutions — prisons,   reformatories, 

*  See  Wallace  Meyer,    Setting  Books  in  Motion.    Survey,  May  20, 
1920. 


LIBRARY  AND  AIUSEUM  SERVICES         359 

homes,  settlements,  maintain  libraries  as  a  necessary  part  of 
their  equipment.^ 

The  development  of  special  libraries  within  compara- 
tively recent  years  has  been  amazing,  and  has  been  greatly 
accelerated  by  the  w^ar.  There  is  a  Special  Libraries  Asso- 
ciation w^ith  an  organ  of  its  own,  affiliated  with  the  Ameri- 
can Library  Association.  The  older  institutions  of  this  type 
are  the  professional  and  society  libraries,  such  as  those  of 
law,  medicine,  theology,  genealogy,  history.  More  recent 
are  technological  libraries,  social  service  libraries,  libraries 
of  art,  architecture,  and  music,  libraries  of  agriculture,  li- 
braries of  legislative  and  municipal  reference,  libraries  of 
government  departments.  A  still  more  recent  development 
is  the  library  of  the  industrial  or  commercial  firm  or  corpo- 
ration. There  are  bank  libraries,  public  utility  libraries, 
insurance  libraries,  libraries  in  industrial  plants,  libraries  in 
department  stores.  These  are  technical  or  service  libraries, 
and  include  not  so  much  books  as  periodicals,  reports,  cata- 
logues, pamphlets,  bulletins,  newspaper  clippings,  plans, 
blue-prints,  photographs,  graphs  and  charts,  sometimes  even 
samples  and  models.  They  may  even  include  motion-picture 
films  and  gramophone  records.  They  are  carried  on  in  close 
relations  with  research  and  publicity  departments,  and  are 
filing  and  clipping  services  as  well  as  libraries  in  the  more 
usual  sense.  There  is  a  growing  number  of  independent 
information  services  or  bureaus  of  this  sort  supplying  sta- 
tistical, financial,  industrial,  and  trade  information  in  various 
fields.  There  is  also  a  group  of  industrial  or  commercial 
research  bureaus.  Women  librarians  attracted  to  a  special 
field  or  eager  to  learn  of  the  world  of  affairs  from  the  inside 
find  good  opportunities  in  special  library  work.  But  for 
the  most  part  they  need  some  antecedent  experience  in  a 
general  library  and  some  acquaintance  with  the  subject  mat- 
ter of  the  field  they  wish  to  enter. 

The  growth  of  large  fortunes  in  the  United  States  has 
led  to  the  collection  of  many  fine  private  libraries,  fre- 
quently along  some  special  line  of  interest.     Some  of  these 

*  See  F.  R.  Curtis.  The  Libraries  of  the  American  State  and  Na- 
tional Institutions  for  Defectives,  Dependents,  and  Delinquents. 
University  of  Minnesota   (1918). 


36o       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

contain  rare  manuscripts  and  early  printed  books,  and  even 
shade  into  collections  of  the  smaller  art  objects.  The  most 
famous  of  these  libraries  is  that  collected  by  the  senior 
J.  Pierpont  Morgan,  In  some  cases  professional  librarians 
are  in  charge,  and  assist  in  adding  to  the  collections.  In 
other  cases  they  are  called  in  to  prepare  special  catalogues. 
Such  librarians  must  be  bibliographical  experts  and  biblio- 
philes. Positions  of  this  sort  are  exceptional,  and  have  their 
limitations  as  well  as  their  advantages.  But  an  assistantship 
in  a  private  library,  if  the  opportunity  offered,  might  be  in- 
valuable as  training,  even  if  it  did  not  appeal  as  a  permanent 
career. 

During  the  war  many  professional  librarians  were  drafted 
into  the  service  of  government  departments  and  of  indus- 
tries working  on  government  contracts,  to  install  and  direct 
large  filing  systems.  Salaries  paid  were  markedly  higher 
than  in  library  work;  and  the  combined  appeals  of  patriotism 
and  the  pocketbook  led  to  a  serious  shortage  of  librarians. 
Many  employers  prefer  women  with  library  training  as  file 
managers  or  head  file  clerks ;  and  the  distinction  between  a 
business  librarian  and  a  filing  expert  is  in  practice  often 
difficult  to  make.  But  librarianship  and  filing  seem  to  have 
certain  techniques  in  common  rather  than  any  identity  of 
subject  matter  and  interest.  The  librarian  proper  is  drawn 
toward  the  profession  because  of  a  genuine  interest  in 
books  and  in  what  books  stand  for  in  human  life.  The  me- 
chanics of  their  arrangement  and  distribution  are  for  him 
or  her  only  the  means  to  an  end.  In  the  earlier  stages  of 
the  evolution  of  modern  business  filing,  librarians  were  the 
only  workers  with  a  technique  that  could  be  easily  adapted 
to  the  new  requirements.  But  to-day  there  are  filing  ex- 
perts ;  there  are  good  filing  schools  and  courses ;  and  the 
makers  of  office  and  filing  equipment  are  constantly  study- 
ing these  matters  and  putting  out  books  of  instruction  and 
advice.  A  recent  excellent  booklet  of  this  sort,  issued  by 
the  Library  Bureau,  is  entitled :  Filing  as  a  Profession  for 
Women;  and  there  is  at  least  one  periodical  devoted  to  the 
discussion  of  filing  questions.  Whatever  its  present  claims  to 
the  title  of  a  profession,  we  must  admit  that  filing  was  only 
a  foster  child  of  librarianship,  and  properly  belongs  with 


LIBRARY  AND  MUSEUM  SERVICES       361 

the  rapidly  enlarging  group  of  commercial  techniques  and 
professions.  This  stand  was  unequivocally  taken  in  1918  by 
the  Association  of  American  Library  Schools,  after  a  com- 
mittee had  investigated  the  requirements  of  indexing  and 
filing  in  government  offices.  It  was  voted  that  indexing  and 
filing  are  not  library  work,  and  that  special  courses  to  train 
workers  for  such  positions  should  not  be  given  during  the 
summer  sessions  of  library  schools,  even  in  war-time.  It  is 
nevertheless  true  that  the  war-time  demand  upon  librarians 
for  these  services  has  had  important  results  in  defining  the 
standards  of  the  profession  and  in  raising  library'  salaries 
at  least  toward  an  adequate  professional  level. 

Library  workers  are  easily  grouped  as  administrative  and 
executive  experts,  as  non-administrative  experts,  and  as 
service-workers.^  The  term  "apprentice"  in  this  profession 
is  limited  to  a  worker  receiving  training  in  a  large  library 
rather  than  at  a  library  school.  Such  apprentice  training 
prepares  for  work  in  tlie  given  library  better  than  it  does 
for  broader  and  more  genuinely  professional  librarianship. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  importance  of  supervised  practice  as 
a  part  of  training  is  increasingly  recognized  in  this  as  in 
other  professions ;  and  a  year  as  a  library  ''interne"  may 
soon  be  considered  a  requisite  part  of  a  library  course.  Too 
many  library  school  graduates  have  been  turned  loose  upon 
the  smaller  libraries  better  equipped  to  deal  with  catalogues 
than  with  people. 

Library  administrators  and  executives  include  directors, 
"head  librarians,"  as  they  are  sometimes  called,  assistant 
directors,  and  those  in  charge  of  the  several  departments  of 
a  large  library:  heads  of  the  catalogue,  reference,  and  circu- 
lation departments,  of  the  children's,  art,  medical,  technologi- 
cal departments,  and  so  on.  They  are  experienced  pro- 
fessional workers  who  plan  policies,  prepare  budgets,  select 
and  supervise  their  stafifs,  and  decide  upon  the  choice  and 
purchase  of  books  and  other  equipment,  all  under  the  final 
authority  of  the  library  board.  IMost  library  directors  hold 
periodic  staff  meetings.  In  this  group  fall  also  librarians 
of  branch  city  libraries  and  traveling  organizers  and  super- 
visors sent  out  by  state  library  commissions.     The  non-ad- 

*  See  specifications  of  Massachusetts  Librarian  Group,  pp.  49-5-- 


362       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

ministrative  group  includes  expert  cataloguers  and  buyers, 
speciiHsts  in  rare  books,  in  art,  music,  work  with  the  blind, 
with  foreigners,  with  children.  Here,  too,  belong  story- 
tellers for  children,  preparers  of  exhibits,  and  writers  of 
special  library  bulletins,  all  workers  having  to  do  with  the 
instructional  and  publicity  side  of  the  library.  Service-work- 
ers include  the  younger  librarians  who  are  doing  library 
woik  of  one  kind  and  another  under  supervision.  They  are 
frequently  "rotated"  through  the  different  departments  to 
give  them  an  understanding  of  the  organization  as  a  whole. 
In  small  libraries,  of  course,  one  or  two  people  may  perform 
all  these  various  duties.  There  is  much  to  be  said  for  gen- 
eral experience  in  a  library  of  this  size.  But  every  librarian 
should  in  addition  become  a  specialist,  either  in  some  one 
library  process  or  in  the  reading  needs  of  some  one  group 
in  the  community. 

The  librarian's  work  is  often  compared  with  the  teacher's, 
and  her  longer  hours,  shorter  vacations  and  frequently  lower 
salary  are  dwelt  upon.  On  the  other  hand,  her  responsibih- 
ties  are  less  concentrated  and  more  diversified.  She  js  under 
no  such  strain  as  that  of  the  classroom;  she  comes  into 
pleasant  and  friendly  relations  with  all  types  and  groups 
in  the  community,  old  and  young;  she  has  many  small 
chances  and  some  large  ones  to  show  quick-wittedness  and 
ingenuity ;  she  works  with  congenial  people  in  attractive 
surroundings  and  in  intimate  contact  with  books  and  ideas. 
For  those  who  care  for  both  books  and  people,  there  is  a 
steady  satisfaction  in  bringing  the  two  together.  The  dis- 
advantages in  the  way  of  salary  are  on  the  road  to  cor- 
rection. For  librarians  whose  interests  are  chiefly  scholarly 
and  academic,  there  are  positions  in  college  and  school  li- 
braries ;  for  those  who  prefer  the  technical  rather  than  the 
human  sides  of  library  work,  there  are  positions  as  cata- 
loguers and  expert  tracers  and  buyers  of  books  and  other 
library  materials. 

Full  professional  training  for  librarianship  is  increasingly 
secured  through  the  recognized  library  schools,  although 
certain  public  and  university  libraries  maintain  apprentice 
classes.  Eleven  schools  make  up  the  Association  of  Ameri- 
can Library  Schools.     TvvO,  the  New  York  State  Library 


LIBRARY  AND  MUSEUM  SERVICES        363 

School  at  Albany  and  more  recently  the  University  of  Illi- 
nois Library  School,  require  a  college  degree  for  admission ; 
one,  the  Department  of  Library  Science  of  Simmons  Col- 
lege, combines  library  training  with  a  four  years'  college 
course.  The  other  schools  require  a  good  general  education 
with  a  reading  knowledge  of  modern  languages,  and  prefer 
an  antecedent  college  course.  The  ordinary  course  is  one 
or  two  years  in  length.  It  is  gaining  in  flexibility  and  in 
contact  with  actual  library  practices  and  problems.  There 
is  still  much  to  be  learned  in  the  way  of  library  psycholog}-, 
both  urban  and  rural.  A  young  woman  considering  librarj' 
work  as  a  profession  will  do  well  to  serve  as  a  student  as- 
sistant in  her  college  library  and  as  an  apprentice  or  assist- 
ant in  some  public  library  during  a  summer  vacation  or  two 
of  her  undergraduate  course. 

Graduates  of  library  schools  usually  secure  their  first  po- 
sitions at  least  through  these  schools.  Government  and 
sometimes  public  library  positions  are  filled  through  civil- 
service  examinations.  Employers  of  special  and  business 
librarians  sometimes  turn  to  professional  employment  bu- 
reaus. In  the  newer  types  of  library  work  direct  applica- 
tion is  often  successful;  but  is  somewhat  wasteful  of  time 
and  effort. 

Librarianship  is  predominantly  a  salaried  profession.  A 
few  expert  librarians,  cataloguers,  and  bibliographers  have 
succeeded  as  consultants  and  library  agents.  Librarians  are 
employed  as  cataloguers  and  indexers  by  such  organizations 
as  the  American  Library  Association,  and  the  H.  W.  Wilson 
Company.  There  are  a  few  in  library  journalism  and  ad- 
vertising. 

The  war  shortage  of  librarians  brought  the  matter  of 
low  salaries  to  a  crisis.  A  circular  letter  sent  out  in  April, 
1918,  to  library  trustees  and  librarians  by  the  Association 
of  American  Library  Schools  stated  that  during  1917  19 
per  cent  of  the  reference  staff  and  27  per  cent  of  the  circu- 
lation staff  of  the  New  York  Public  Library  resigned  to  ac- 
cept better  paid  positions,  with  similar  losses  in  Brooklyn, 
Cleveland  and  elsewhere.  "The  graduates  of  the  Pratt  In- 
stitute Library  School,  class  of  1917,  who  have  gone  into 
library  work,  are  getting  an  average  salary  of  $845 ;  those 


364       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

who  are  in  government  and  business  positions  are  getting 
an  average  of  $1,177."  Recent  figures  from  the  New  York 
State  Library  School  show  that  salaries  for  professional 
librarians  have  risen  markedly  during  the  past  three  years. 
For  the  four  years,  1913-1916,  the  average  salary  for  those 
taking  positions  at  the  end  of  their  first  year's  training  was 
$830;  for  the  three  following  years,  1917-1919,  it  was  $891, 
$962,  $1,020,  respectively.  Two-year  students  at  comple- 
tion of  the  course  received  during  1913-1916  an  average 
initial  salary  of  $996.  The  average  salary  for  the  three  fol- 
lowing years  has  been  $1,131,  $1,220,  $1,341. 

Vocations  for  Business  and  Professional  Women  gives 
a  salary  range  for  all  grades  and  types  of  librarians  of  $720 
— $3,000.^  In  individual  instances  salaries  are  much  higher 
than  this.  The  woman  director  of  one  of  the  best  city 
public  libraries  in  the  country  is  said  to  receive  a  salary  of 
$8,000.  With  the  present  cost  of  living  no  graduate  of  a 
standard  library  school  should  receive  less  than  $1,000  in 
the  country  and  $1,200  in  the  city.  If  she  is,  in  addition, 
a  college  graduate,  the  figures  should  be  $1,200  and  $1,400. 
Salaries  of  the  fourteen  librarians  filling  our  schedules  in 
1918  and  1919  ranged  from  $1,100  to  $2,400,  with  a  median 
of  $1,500.  Eight  of  these  women  are  college  graduates; 
four  have  had  partial  college  courses;  seven  are  graduates 
of  library  schools ;  two  have  had  apprentice  courses  in  large 
university  libraries.  The  highest  salaries  were  those  of  the 
director  of  a  middle-western  public  library,  the  librarian 
and  registrar  of  a  war-emergency  government  service-school, 
an  educational  and  editorial  expert  in  one  of  the  most  pro- 
gressive public  libraries  of  the  east.    Salaries  of  $2,000  and 

*  The  Reclassification  Report  gives  specifications  for  different 
classes  of  librarian  in  the  Library  of  Congress,  the  District  of  Co- 
lumbia Public  Library  and  high  school  libraries,  and  Departmental 
Libraries.  Salaries  proposed  range  from  $1,200  to  $4,000,  not  in- 
cluding the  Librarian  or  Assistant  Librarian  of  Congress  or  the 
Public  Librarian.  Salaries  of  junior  library  assistants  are  from 
$1,320  to  $1,550;  of  assistants,  from  $1,560  to  $1,920;  of  senior  as- 
sistants and  cataloguers  and  classifiers,  from  $1,980  to  $2,340;  of 
high  school  librarians,  $1,200  to  $1,500;  of  children's  librarian,  pub- 
lic library,  from  $1,620  to  $1,800;  of  administrative  librarian,  depart- 
mental library,  from  $2,520  to  $2,880;  of  chiefs  of  divisions,  Library 
of  Congress,  $3,000  to  $4,000. 


LIBRARY  AND  MUSEUM  SERVICES        365 

over  were  received  by  an  assistant  in  a  government  depart- 
ment library  and  the  librarian  of  the  chemical  library  of  a 
great  chemical  and  explosives  industry.  Salaries  of  $1,500 
and  over  were  received  by  the  assistant  librarian  of  a  great 
eastern  art  museum,  and  by  the  librarians  of  a  medical  and 
social  organization  of  national  scope  and  a  national  bureau 
concerned  with  social  insurance.  Salaries  between  $1,100 
and  $1,500  were  received  by  a  supervisor  of  cataloguers 
in  a  metropolitan  public  library  of  the  East,  by  the  librarian 
and  editorial  supervisor  of  a  middle-western  school  of 
social  work,  by  the  librarian  of  an  eastern  organization 
for  the  economic  and  vocational  advancement  of  women, 
by  a  custodian  of  rare  books  in  a  middle-western  state  uni- 
versity, by  the  head  of  the  art  department  of  a  famous 
middle-western  public  library,  by  the  medical  and  general 
librarian  of  an  endowed  mental  hospital.  Some  of  these 
salaries  have  no  doubt  been  advanced  since  they  were  re- 
ported. The  list  of  positions  shows  the  variety  of  work 
in  the  profession. 

Some  of  the  comments  and  suggestions  of  these  women 
may  be  quoted:  "Maintain  as  wide  an  acquaintance  as 
possible  with  members  of  the  same  profession.  Take  as 
active  a  part  as  possible  in  the  work  of  professional  organi- 
zations, such  as  the  American  Library  Association,  the  Spe- 
cial Libraries  Association." 

"In  advising  women  entering  library  work,  I'd  begin 
when  they  were  in  college,  and  advise  them  to  take  all  the 
languages,  history,  and  literature  they  could,  though  noth- 
ing comes  amiss.  Then  they  ought  to  have  a  year's  ex- 
perience in  a  library  and  finally  a  course  in  a  good  library 
school." 

"Obtain  a  good  general  education,  some  business  expe- 
rience, library  school  training,  and  experience  with  peo- 
ple." 

"Have  a  college  degree,  thorough  training  in  languages 
and  history  of  art.  Love  books,  and  be  ready  and  willing 
to  do  detail  and  routine  work." 

"Emphasize  always  the  community  value  of  the  library. 
Be  sure  to  realize  the  ideals  and  vision  of  the  work  before 
coming  into  it ;  otherwise  one  might  be  submerged  by  its 


366       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

drudgery  and  routine.    In  this  case  it  would  be  impossible 
to  succeed." 

"I  would  advise  women  librarians  not  to  enter  govern- 
ment service  if  they  must  go  on  the  'statutory  roll'  until 
some  standardization  of  salaries  and  promotion  systems  is 
adopted." 

The  large  majority  of  librarians  are  women,  but  men 
hold  most  important  administrative  posts. 

Museum  work  is  a  more  recently  developed  and  a  more 
restricted  profession  for  women  than  librarianship.  Pro- 
fessional training,  positions,  and  salaries  are  all  far  less 
standardized.  It  is,  however,  expanding  and  gaining  defi- 
nition under  the  influence  of  the  newer  conception  of  the 
museum  as  a  social  and  educational  agency  comparable 
with  the  library.  The  old  custodial  idea  of  the  museum  as 
an  august  and  seldom  visited  repository  is  rapidly  vanishing, 
although  it  is  still  held  by  some  conservative  boards  of 
museum  trustees.  Work  in  the  modern  type  of  museum 
appeals  strongly  to  women  who  combine  equipment  in  art, 
science,  ethnology,  industry,  and  the  like,  with  interest  in 
the  social  and  psychological  uses  of  collections  illustrating 
these  subject  matters. 

Museums  are  broadly  of  two  types,  museums  of  art  and 
museums  of  science  and  natural  history.  In  smaller  places 
the  same  building  may  house  both  types.  Ethnological  col- 
lections are  increasing  in  importance,  and  have  both  scien- 
tific and  artistic  aspects.  There  are  likewise  commercial 
and  industrial,  historical,  safety-appliance,  social  and  civic 
museums.  These  last  are  often  distinguished  from  exhi- 
bitions only  by  their  more  permanent  character.  They  fre- 
quently originate  through  the  preservation  of  collections  as- 
sembled for  exhibition  purposes.  Thus  the  Philadelphia 
Commercial  Museum  grew  out  of  the  Centennial  Exposition 
of  1876;  the  Field  Columbian  Museum  of  Natural  History 
in  Chicago  out  of  the  World's  Fair  of  1893.  The  greatest 
art  museum  of  the  country  is  the  New  York  Metropolitan 
Museum  of  Art;  the  greatest  scientific  museum  is  the  New 
York  American  Museum  of  Natural  History.  But  Boston, 
Philadelphia,  Pittsburgh,  Washington,  Chicago,  Baltimore,' 
and   Buffalo  have  famous  art  museums ;  and  good  museums 


I 


LIBRARY  AND  MUSEUM  SERVICES       367 

of  lesser  reputation  exist  in  many  other  cities,  and  are  in- 
creasing in  number.  The  great  government  museums  in 
Washington  contain  many  unrivaled  scientific  and  ethnolog- 
ical collections ;  and  there  are  some  important  state  histori- 
cal and  scientific  museums. 

Museum  workers  include  in  the  administrative  group 
directors,  curators,  heads  of  departments,  and  their  as- 
sistants ;  in  the  group  of  non-administrative  experts,  spe- 
cialists in  charge  of  the  collection,  preparation,  exhibition, 
study,  and  description  of  museum  objects  of  various  sorts; 
in  the  instructional  group,  museum  instructors,  "docents," 
story  tellers,  preparers  of  bulletins,  leaflets,  study  and  read- 
ing lists,  newspaper  notices,  organizers  of  special  exhibits 
within  the  museum  and  of  traveling  exhibits  to  be  sent  to 
schools  or  to  other  communities.  Women  are  doing  practi- 
cally all  these  types  of  museum  work,  although  most  of 
those  in  administrative  positions  are  assistants.^  The  di- 
rector, however,  of  the  Albright  Art  Gallery  in  Buffalo  is 
a  woman.  The  work  itself  is  a  valuable  and  unique  form 
of  training.  Through  it  a  few  women  have  become  recog- 
nized experts  in  textiles,  design,  the  appraisal,  collection  and 
identification  of  art  objects,  and  in  certain  scientific  and 
ethnological  fields.  They  write  for  technical,  art,  archeolog- 
ical,  and  scientific  journals ;  they  prepare  catalogues  of  spe- 
cial collections ;  they  are  even  foreign  buyers,  a  field  tragic- 
ally expanded  through  the  dire  blows  to  populations  and 
property  inflicted  by  the  war.  Only  a  few  intrepid  women 
have  been  field  collectors  of  scientific  materials.  Art  mu- 
seum experience  furnishes  an  admirable  background  for 
some  forms  of  interior  decorating,  for  the  designing  of  set- 
tings and  costumes  for  plays,  pageants,  and  motion  pictures, 
for  directing  exhibits,  even  for  certain  types  of  display 
advertising. 

•  There  are  no  recognized  schools  of  museum  training  other 
than  museums  themselves  here  and  abroad,  the  various  for- 
eign schools  and  institutes  of  art  ^nd  archeology,  and  the 
graduate  departments  of  universities,  especially  those  of 
art,  archeology,  anthropology  and  ethnology,  and  the  various 
natural    sciences.      The    intimate    relations   between    great 

*See  Margaret  T.  Jackson.    The  Museum  (1917)- 


368       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

European  museums,  higher  schools  of  industrial  art,  and 
the  artistic  industries  are  only  beginning  in  this  country, 
although  there  are  likely  to  be  marked  developments  within 
the  next  few  years.  The  Metropolitan  Museum  has  re- 
cently appointed  an  associate  in  industrial  arts  "whose  spe- 
cific business  it  is  to  help  the  manufacturer,  dealer,  de- 
signer, artisan,  or  manual  craftsman  in  taking  advantage  of 
the  privileges  offered  by  the  Museum."  The  National  So- 
ciety for  Vocational  Education  is  undertaking  a  survey 
of  all  opportunities  in  the  United  States  for  training  in 
the  industrial  arts.^  Some  cooperative  arrangements  for 
training  have  existed  between  Teachers  College  of  Colum- 
bia University  and  the  Metropolitan  Museum ;  and  several 
museums  have  undertaken  somewhat  experimentally  the 
training  of  qualified  young  women  as  docents  or  instructors. 
But  for  the  most  part  they  look  to  the  departments  of  uni- 
versities for  the  comparatively  few  highly  trained  begin- 
ners that  they  require. 

From  this  it  follows  that  such  positions  are  most  fre- 
quently secured  through  the  professors  with  whom  a  woman 
has  studied.  Direct  application  must  be  backed  by  their 
recommendations.  The  American  Association  of  Museums, 
however,  acts  as  a  clearing-house  of  information  with  ref- 
erence to  both  positions  and  workers ;  and  is  performing  a 
valuable  service  in  developing  professional  group  spirit  and 
professional  standards  of  preparation  and  compensation. 
But  the  very  nature  of  museum  work  tends  to  make  its  con- 
ditions and  its  practitioners  individual  and  highly  specialized. 

Salaries,  in  consequence,  are  unstandardized  and  fre- 
quently even  lower  than  those  of  librarians  and  teachers, 
although  professional  requirements  are  higher.  In  many 
cases  the  chance  to  work  in  a  special  museum  is  so  highly 
valued  that  an  unduly  low  salary  is  accepted.  Salaries  of 
seventeen  museum  workers  filling  our  schedules  ranged  in 
1918  from  $600  to  $2,400,  with  a  median  salary  of  $1,060. 
These  workers  represented  museums  of  almost  every  size 
and  type.     As  a  group  they  were  older  than  the  library 

*  See  Florence  Levy.  Art  Education:  An  Investigation  of  the 
Traininq  Available  in  New  York  City  for  Artists  and  Artisans 
(Pamphlet,  1917). 


I 


LIBRARY  AND  MUSEUM  SERVICES        369 

group,  including  four  women  over  fifty,  four  between  forty 
and  fifty,  and  only  three  graduating  since  1910.     This  re- 
flects to  some  extent  the  survival  of  the  custodial  type  of 
museum  worker,  although  four  of  the  older  women  were 
college  graduates.    In  all,  eleven  of  the  seventeen  were  col- 
lege women.     Three  had  had  considerable  graduate  work, 
and  one  was  a  doctor  of  philosophy  in  geology  and  paleon- 
tology.   One  was  a  graduate  of  Simmons  College  in  library 
science ;  another  had  had  a  year's  apprenticeship  in  a  large 
city  library.     An  instructor  in  an  art  museum  had  studied 
painting  in  a  famous  Paris  academy  and  bookbinding  at 
the  Doves  bindery  in  London ;  another  instructor  had  made 
eleven  trips  to  foreign  countries,  including  two  to  Asia  and 
one  around  the  world.     The  assistant  director  of  a  large 
western  art  museum  after  leaving  college   studied  at  the 
American  School  for  Classical  Studies  in  Rome  and  in  the 
museums  of  Germany,  England,  France,  and  Italy  under 
masters  of  the  profession.     She  served  as  a  volunteer  as- 
sistant in  Berlin,  and  has  command  of  French,  German. 
Italian,  Latin,  and  Greek.     There  was  only  one  salary  of 
$2,400,  received  by  the  director  of  an  eastern  children's  mu- 
seum. '  The  assistant  director  of  a  western  art  museum  and 
a  lecturer  and  docent  in  the  fine-arts  department  and  library 
school  of  a  large  endowed  institute  received  $1,800;  the 
assistant  curator  of  a  children's  museum.  $1,380;  the  di- 
rector of  a  small  New  England  museum  of  natural  histor}', 
an  instructor  in  a  great  middle-western  art  museum,  and  an 
assistant  in  a  great  eastern  scientific  museum,  $1,200.     An- 
other assistant  in  this  museum  received  $1,060.    The  director 
of  an  art  gallery  in  a  small  eastern  city,  the  head  of  the 
educational  department  of  a  well-known  New  England  art 
museum,  and  the  assistant  to  the  curator  in  the  public  park 
museum  of  an  eastern  city  received  $1,000;  the  curator  of  a 
small  state  historical  museum,  the  curator  of  books  and 
public  instruction  in  the  natural  history  museum  of  a  south- 
ern city,  and  the  assistant  in  a  children's  museum  $900.    Be- 
low this   fall  an  assistant  in  a  Pacific  coast  ethnological 
museum   and  the   registrar  in   the   public   museum   of   an 
eastern  industrial  city. 

The  varieties  of  work  performed  in  these  positions  can 


370      WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

be  most  aptly  described  through  quotations  from  our  sched- 
ules. The  assistant  director  of  an  art  museum  says :  "I 
assist  the  director  in  everything  and  take  charge  during  his 
absence;  edit  bulletin,  act  as  registrar  and  dean  of  the  art 
school;  accession  all  works  of  art;  supervise  cataloguing; 
arrange  for  transit  of  exhibitions ;  hang  exhibitions ;  pre- 
pare material  for  catalogue,  etc." 

An  instructor  writes:  "As  head  of  the  educational  de^ 
partment,  I  am  required  to  supervise  work  with  children, 
which  includes  drawing  and  modeling  and  a  weekly  story 
hour,  with  a  yearly  attendance  of  7,000  children.  Two  paid 
assistants  (one  with  college  training)  and  several  volunteer 
assistants  help  with  this  work.  Secondly,  I  give  talks  on 
art,  with  or  without  stereopticon,  to  school  classes,  clubs, 
parent-teacher  associations,  church  societies,  etc.  These 
are  given  without  fee.  Thirdly,  I  have  supervision  of  the 
loan  department,  which  includes  photographs  and  lantern 
slides.  Aid  in  selection  and  preparation  of  explanatory 
notes  are  part  of  my  work.  Fourthly,  frequent  articles  on 
new  acquisitions  or  on  museum  work  for  newspapers  or  the 
Museum  Bulletin  are  asked  for  by  the  director.  .  .  .  This 
museum  was  a  pioneer  in  work  done  directly  with  child  vis- 
itors." In  1918  this  worker  received  only  $1,000  for  these 
diverse  services.    She  is  not  a  college  graduate. 

The  curator  of  a  small  museum  of  natural  history  writes : 
'T  receive  and  install  material,  make  special  exhibits,  con- 
duct lecture  courses,  prepare  school-loan  collections,  assem- 
ble illustrative  material  for  classes  from  the  schools,  gen- 
erally foster  the  affairs, of  the  museum." 

The  assistant  curator  of  a  children's  museum  writes :  "I 
give  public  lectures  daily;  teach  wireless  telegraphy;  assist 
boys  with  electrical  experiments ;  do  all  of  the  photographic 
work  of  the  museum." 

A  scientific  assistant  in  a  department  of  a  great  natural 
history  museum  writes :  "I  accession  all  acquisitions  in  the 
department ;  catalogue  ;  take  care  of  collections  ;  do  research 
pertaining  to  the  collections ;  make  identifications ;  and  com- 
pile bibliographies." 

An  assistant  in  geology  and  paleontology  in  the  same  mu- 
seum writes  :    "I  carve  plaster  models  of  shells ;  identify  and 


LIBRARY  AND  MUSEUM  SERVICES         371 

classify  fossils ;  write  exhibition  labels ;  plan  exhibits,  etc." 

Some  of  the  comments  on  museum  policy  are  worth  quot- 
ing. "The  director  has  made  one  of  the  most  active  small 
museums  in  the  country  out  of  a  dead  college  collection  of 
stuffed  animals,  and  is  producing  a  maximum  of  efficiency 
on  a  minimum  of  money." 

"The  director  is  in  line  with  all  new  and  approved  meth- 
ods, experiments,  and  discussions,  and  expects  his  staff  to 
be." 

"Our  poHcies  are  conservative,  because  a  board  of  wealthy 
business  men  are  not  sensitive  to  the  importance  of  pro- 
gressive policies  in  the  education  of  young  children." 

"It  is  very  difficult  for  a  museum  to  be  really  progressive 
because  of  the  lack  of  competent  and  well-trained  workers." 

Advice  to  prospective  workers  is  as  follows :  An  art  mu- 
seum instructor  writes :  "It  is  useless  work  without  travel 
in  Europe  and  many  years  of  research." 

Another  writes :  "Get  training  ahead  of  time.  Be  will- 
ing to  work  hard  for  experience  and  willing  to  take  re- 
sponsibility regularly  and  in  an  emergency." 

A  scientific  assistant  writes:  "Do  not  enter  into  it  with- 
out an  understanding  of  what  your  work  will  be.  Come  as 
a  specialist  if  possible.  Take  a  purely  business  attitude 
toward  the  salary  proposition,  and  take  care  not  to  get  into 
a  rut.  It  can  easily  be  done  in  scientific  pursuits — speaking 
for  women.  Men  come  as  scientific  specialists  and  there- 
fore demand  more.  They  will  not  do  routine  work  and 
women  scientists  have  to.  As  routine  workers  your  work 
does  not  speak  loudly,  and  therefore  is  not  paid  for  as  the 
purely  scientific  work." 

One  of  the  foremost  women  art  museum  experts  in  the 
country  writes  :  "Learn  all  you  can  ;  travel  much  ;  use  your 
eyes  and  ears  carefully;  be  adaptable;  go  into  the  work  for 
the  love  of  it,  not  for  the  money  or  advantages  in  it.  Don't 
hesitate  to  take  volunteer  positions  first,  and  be  prepared  to 
spend  years  in  'breaking  into'  any  museum  position." 

An  art  museum  curator  writes:  "Visit  the  best  museums; 
study  the  arrangement  of  exhibits  from  all  standpoints,  es- 
pecially the  artistic.  Show-windows  ^n  the  best  stores  are 
good  guides  sometimes." 


372       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

Another  writes :  "Make  your  galleries  valuable  to  the 
community ;  make  all  visitors  feel  that  you  are  personally 
interested  in  their  getting  the  most  out  of  their  visits.  Se- 
cure frequent  and  excellent  exhibitions." 


CHAPTER  XIX 

TEACHING  AND  OTHER   EDUCATIONAL  SERVICES 

Although  teaching  was  the  pioneer  profession  for 
women,  and  continues  to  make  large  demands  upon  their 
services,  it  has  been  purposely  placed  at  the  end  of  our 
survey  of  the  professions,  with  no  intention  of  minimizing 
its  fundamental  importance  but  in  order  to  show  the  in- 
fluence upon  it  of  recent  professional  movements  and  to 
help  in  determining  its  present  position  and  prospects. 

For  the  past  ten  years  teaching  has  been  making  a  dimin- 
ishing appeal  to  professional  women,  partly  on  account  of 
the  opening  to  them  of  other  professions,  partly  on  account 
of  conditions  in  teaching  itself.  This  turning  away  from 
teaching  was  greatly  accelerated  by  the  war,  and  the  coun- 
try is  facing  to-day  a  critical  shortage  of  teachers  of 
every  grade  and  even  more  serious  prospects  for  the  fu- 
ture unless  teachers  of  the  highest  type  can  be  recruited 
in  sufficient  numbers.  Fortunately,  the  very  seriousness 
of  the  situation  and  the  great  national  audit  of  our  edu- 
cational resources  and  limitations  made  through  the  find- 
ings of  the  draft  and  the  war-time  demands  for  expert 
workers  of  all  sorts  have  given  us  a  new  and  vivid  sense  of 
the  fact  that  education  is  a  basic  national  obligation  and 
teaching  the  most  essential  and  "constant"  form  of  public 
service.  In  spite  of  present  discouragements,  we  are  really 
on  the  threshold  of  the  most  constructive  period  in  educa- 
tion that  this  country  has  ever  known ;  and  women  need  to 
consider  more  carefully  than  ever  before  their  professional 
opportunities  and  responsibilities  with  respect  to  t^eachingy 
and  other  educational  services.  The  profession  as  a  whole 
is  taking  stock  of  itself  and  recognizing  how  far  in  many 
respects  it  falls  below  professional  standards.  It  is  compar- 
ing itself  with  other  professions  and  learning  the  meaning 
of  their  increasing  self-direction  and  increasing  educational 

373 


374      WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

requirements  and  applications.  All  along  the  line,  educa- 
tional institutions  and  the  occupations  are  regarding  each 
other  with  a  new  respect  and  beginning  to  recognize  that 
they  are  distinct  but  supplementary  aspects  of  a  reciprocal 
process.  The  old  contest  between  liberal  and  vocational 
education  is  coming  to  seem  obsolete  in  the  light  of  a  better 
educational  and  social  psychology.  The  changing  attitude  of 
the  colleges  is  described  in  Chapter  XXI.  In  all  this  new 
educational  thinking  the  central  emphasis  is  placed  upon 
the  teacher  and  upon  the  absolute  necessity  of  adequate 
professional  training.  The  untrained  teacher,  whether  high 
school  or  college  graduate,  is  no  longer  looked  upon  as  in 
the  full  sense  a  professional  worker. 

The  present  chapter  can  only  outline  in  a  broad  way 
against  the  background  of  the  other  professions  some  of 
the  opportunities,  advantages,  and  disadvantages  offered  to 
women  by  teaching  and  other  forms  of  educational  service. 
It  cannot  be  said  too  emphatically  that  women  of  high  pro- 
fessional standing  are  nowhere  needed  more  acutely  than  in 
every  part  of  the  teaching  field.  College  women  can  no 
longer  limit  their  interest  to  high  schools,  private  secondary 
schools,  normal  schools,  and  colleges.^  They  are  needed  in 
elementary  schools,  in  vocational  schools,  in  special  schools 
and  classes,  not  only  as  teachers  but  as  supervisors,  princi- 
pals, and  superintendents.  They  are  needed  as  visiting 
teachers,  as  vocational  counselors,  as  teachers  of  foreign- 
ers, as  psychological  examiners  of  school  children,  as  "ed- 
ucational directors"  in  industries  and  in  department  stores ; 
in  Young  Women's  Christian  Associations,  in  Girl  Scout 
organizations,  and  other  clubs  of  girls  and  women,  in 
women's  trade  unions.  They  are  needed  as  executive  sec- 
retaries of  public  education  associations,  parent-teacher 
associations,  educational  leagues,  boards,  and  commissions 
of  all  kinds.  They  are  needed  in  educational  investigation 
and  research :  to  make  school  surveys  and  prepare  school 
exhibits ;  to  collect  and  interpret  educational  statistics ;  to 
study  problems  of  curriculum  and  teaching,  classroom  per- 
formance tests,  physical  and  mental  tests  and  measurements ; 

*  See  Frank  E.  Spaulding.  Do  College  Women  Believe  in  Edu- 
cation F    Vassar  and  Smith  Quarterlies.     November,  1920. 


I 


EDUCATIONAL  SERVICES  375 

standardizations  along  many  lines.  ^  Education  and  right 
teaching  are  back  of  and  permeate  every  type  of  organized 
group  effort. 

There  is  something  bracing  to  self-respect  about  be- 
longing to  a  profession  supported  largely  through  pub- 
lic taxation  and  serving  the  community  on  the  side  of  its 
normal  growth,  not  on  the  side  of  its  lapses  and  break- 
downs. Among  the  rights  upon  which  modern  society  de- 
pends and  which  every  democratic  society  must  guarantee 
to  its  members — the  right  to  truth,  the  right  to  justice,  the 
right  to  health,  the  right  to  work,  the  right  to  leisure — the 
right  to  truth,  for  the  transmission  and  enlargement  of 
which  the  teaching  profession  is  primarily  responsible,  is 
surely  the  most  fundamental.  Upon  it  depend  all  the  other 
rights  and  the  maintenance  of  the  social  order  itself.  In 
a  large  sense,  all  professions  are  educational  as  having  to 
do  with  the  progressive  reconstruction  of  society,  and  only 
fully  professional  in  so  far  as  they  are  educational.  The 
schools  of  a  community,  no  matter  how  wretched  they  may 
be,  are  at  least  potentially  its  most  democratic  and  hopeful 
civic  asset.  The  other  professions  are  to-day  rallying  around 
the  school;  the  school  is  offering  them  its  hospitality  and 
asking  their  aid.  With  community  centers  and  health  and 
nutrition  centers  in  the  school  or  closely  allied  with  it ;  with 
visiting  teachers  going  out  to  the  homes  and  others  teaching 
foreigners  in  the  factories ;  with  libraries  and  museums  and 
chambers  of  commerce  and  labor  unions  all  cooperating 
with  the  school,  no  one  can  say  that  it  is  UQt  an  active  civic 
and  social  agency,  and  that  the  teacher  is  not  a  social  worker 
in  the  most  constructive  and  least  patronizing  sense.  The 
college  graduate  who  wishes  to  work  with  girls  has  as  fine 
an  opportunity  in  the  high  school  as  in  any  philanthropic 
organization ;  the  college  graduate  who  yearns  to  do  "Amer- 
icanization work"  can  learn  more  of  its  problems  through 
teaching  in  a  school  attended  by  the  children  of  foreigners 
than  she  can  ever  learn  outside  of  it ;  the  college  graduate 
who  would  become  an  employment  manager  may  well  serve 

'  For  an  admirable  brief  statement  of  present-day  opportunities 
in  education,  see  Vocational  Information,  Leland  Stanford  Junior 
University  Bulletin  (1919)1  under  Education. 


376       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

at  least  an  apprenticeship  in  the  sort  of  school  from  which 
young  factory  workers  are  recruited;  the  college  graduate 
who  would  understand  the  rural  community  may  get  her 
best  chance  for  real  insight — for  country  folk  are  not  so 
"broken"  to  investigation  as  are  city  folk — through  teaching 
in  a  country  school.    Instead  of  being  the  oldest  and  dullest 
of  professions,  as  it  sometimes  seems  to  the  young,  teaching 
to-day  gives  promise  of  becoming  one  of  the  newest  and 
most  adventurous,  with  battles  and  conquests  all  along  the 
line,  all  sorts  of  intellectual  and  moral  "equivalents  of  war." 
But  all  the§e  new  opportunities  and  new  outlooks  in  the 
old  opportunities  call  for  women  with  fine  social  intelligence, 
broad  education,  and  command  of  the  resources  and  tech- 
niques of  their  profession.    If  teaching  is  to  rise  to  full  pro- 
fessional stature,  it  must  not  be  recruited  from  the  ranks 
of  the  timid,  the  dull,  or  the  lazy.     Ten  or  fifteen  years 
ago  most  college  graduates  of  ability  turned  perforce  to 
teaching;  those  of  lesser  ability  followed.     The  movement 
for  bureaus  of  occupations  and  college  conferences  on  oc- 
cupations other  than  teaching,  described  in  the  next  two 
chapters,  began  not  in  competition  with  teaching  but  in  the 
effort  to  provide  for  those  whose  talents  and  inclinations 
lay  in  other  directions  and  who  often  became  teachers  in 
default  of  other  opportunities,  to  their  own  dissatisfaction 
and  to  the  detriment  of  teaching  itself.    The  claims  of  teach- 
ing as  a  profession  for  college  women  were  assumed  to  be 
paramount  and  universally  recognized.     But  nowadays  the 
attraction  of  other  occupations  is  so  strong  that  teaching 
has  become  a  discredited  and  almost  forgotten  occupation. 
to  which  young  college  graduates  turn  only  as  a  stop-gap 
employment,  or  when  they  lack  ambition  or  ability  to  go 
into  anything  else.     College  professors   report   that  their 
ablest  students  laugh  at  the  idea  that  they  shall  seriously 
prepare  themselves  for  teaching  as  a  career.     Teaching  no 
longer  speaks  for  itself  to  college  women.     It  has  to  be 
brought  definitely  to  their  attention  like  any  other  occupa- 
tion and  to  compete  with  them  on  its  merits.     So  serious 
has  the  lack  of  young  teachers  of  the  best  type  become  for 
the  private  schools  that  the  Headmistresses'  Association  is 
asking  women  prominent  in  education  to  speak  before  the 


EDUCATIONAL  SERVICES  377 

students  of  the  women's  colleges  on  teaching  as  a  profession. 
Thus  not  so  long  ago  were  presented  the  claims  of  banking 
or  industry,  chemistry  or  medical  social  service.  The  high 
schools  are  meeting  similar  difficulties ;  and  there  is  need 
of  a  careful  study  of  the  whole  matter  of  the  future  supply 
of  college  teachers.  In  this  fall  of  teaching  from  its  former 
high  estate  as  the  major  occupation  for  college  women 
there  is  one  obvious  advantage.  It  calls  attention  to  the 
fact  that  the  modern  college  of  liberal  arts  is  not  a  pro- 
fessional school  for  teachers  any  more  than  it  is  for  other 
professions.  The  college  has  preserved  with  respect  to 
teachers  its  last  vocational  inheritance  from  the  medieval 
university.  But  its  function  here  as  elsewhere  is  only  pre- 
professional,  and  the  preparation  it  offers  is  not  sufficient 
by  itself  to  place  teaching  fully  on  a  par  with  other  modern 
professions. 

The  present  disinclination  to  teaching,  however,  goes 
deeper  than  the  competition  of  other  professions,  the  lack 
of  proper  advertising,  and  even  the  lack  of  adequate  pro- 
fessional training.  The  drop  in  the  number  and  the  caliber 
of  those  looking  forward  to  teaching,  the  exodus  from  the 
ranks  of  those  already  in  the  profession,  are  signs  that 
something  is  wrong  with  the  profession  itself.  Much  the 
same  sort  of  thing  has  been  happening  in  the  fields  of 
domestic  service  and  farm  labor.  They  show  that  the  time 
is  ripe  for  readjustment  and  reorganization  throughout  the 
entire  range  of  teaching;  and  this  is  coming  about.  Its  most 
obvious  disadvantages  have  always  been  the  low  salaries 
paid  and  the  slow  and  uncertain  rate  of  advancement.  In 
the  old  days  these  were  supposed  to  be  offset  by  security  of 
tenure,  social  standing,  long  vacations,  and  congeniality  of 
occupation.  With  the  present  high  cost  of  living  the  finan- 
cial situation  of  teachers  has  become  so  desperate  that  it 
accounts  wholly  to  many  people  for  the  present  menacing 
shortage  of  workers  in  the  profession.  But  other  salaried 
professions  are  facing  similar  difficulties;  and  in  all  of 
them,  as  in  teaching,  vigorous  steps  are  being  taken  to  put 
the  whole  matter  of  remuneration  and  promotion  on  a  sound- 
er and  juster  basis  than  ever  before.  (See  Chapter  III.) 
What  amounts  to  a  national  campaign  for  increasing  teach- 


378       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

ers'  salaries  has  been  in  progress,  including  the  various  great 
college  "drives."  ^  Its  educational  as  well  as  its  financial 
results  are  bound  to  be  large.  But  low  salaries  are  not  the 
only  disadvantage  in  the  teaching  profession.  There  is  a 
growing  realization  on  the  part  of  successful  teachers  and 
other  educational  leaders  throughout  the  country  that  a 
fundamental  weakness  of  teaching  as  a  profession  lies  in 
the  fact  that  teachers  have  no  share  in  determining  the  con- 
ditions under  which  their  work  is  carried  on.  In  the  public 
school  system  they  do  not  participate,  as  a  rule,  even  in  an 
advisory  capacity,  in  the  framing  of  educational  and  admin- 
istrative policies,  the  organization  of  the  curriculum,  the  se- 
lection of  superintendents,  principals,  and  teachers,  the 
choice  of  text-books,  the  establishment  of  salary-schedules 
and  systems  of  promotion.  Their  responsibility  is  supposed 
to  be  limited  to  the  class-room ;  at  most,  to  the  faculty  meet- 
ing and  the  individual  school.  In  higher  education,  the 
situation  is  not  very  much  better.  Educational  direction  is 
exclusively  in  the  hands  of  boards  of  education,  boards  of 
trustees,  superintendents,  principals,  and  presidents.  Teach- 
ers are  commonly  not  informed  of  what  is  going  on  until 
decisions  have  been  reached,  and  sometimes  not  then.  In 
no  other  profession  have  professional  workers  so  little  con- 
trol over  matters  that  affect  their  own  welfare  and  their  re- 
lations to  the  public,  although  it  is  a  danger  inherent  in  all 
professions  on  a  salaried  basis.  It  is  this  lack  of  partici- 
pation in  the  enterprise  of  education  rather  than  low  salaries 
that  accounts  to  thinking  people  for  the  precarious  status  of 
teaching  as  a  profession  and  the  turning  away  from  it  of  the 
more  vigorous  and  active-minded  of  the  present  generation. 
In  this  respect  teaching  is  increasingly  out  of  touch  with  the 
whole  tendency  and  spirit  of  the  modern  occupational  world. 
The  old  conception  of  academic  freedom  is  negative  and 
passive,  a  mere  freedom  from  interference.  It  needs  to 
become  a  positive  conception  of  freedom  through  responsi- 
bility.    Teachers  are  too  often  hired  subordinates  rather 

*  A  National  Citizens'  Conference  on  Education  attended  by  the 
governors  and  educational  authorities  of  many  states  was  held  in 
Washington,  under  the  auspices  of  the  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Education 
in  May,  1920. 


EDUCATIONAL  SERVICES  379 

than  professional  workers.  But  here,  too,  there  are  signs  of 
a  new  era.  In  both  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States  they 
are  asking  for  representation  on  boards  of  educational  con- 
trol and  for  the  formation  of  teachers'  advisory-  councils. 
The  Committee  on  the  Emergency  in  Education  of  the  Na- 
tional Education  Association  has  recommended  that  every 
school  board  should  recognize  the  right  of  teachers  to  ap- 
pear before  it,  and  that  this  right  should  be  guaranteed  by 
legislation.  "Next  to  the  provision  of  better  salaries  for 
teachers,  nothing  will  do  more  to  raise  the  status  of  the 
profession  and  make  its  service  attractive  to  the  kind  of 
men  and  women  that  the  schools  need,  than  the  adoption 
of  a  policy  that  will  lift  the  classroom  teacher  above  the 
level  of  a  mere  routine  worker  carrying  out  in  a  mechanical 
fashion  plans  and  policies  that  are  handed  down  from 
above."  Successful  teachers'  councils  exist  in  Boston,  To- 
ledo, Washington,  Cincinnati,  Portland,  Oregon,  and  other 
cities,  and  are  being  widely  established.  There  seems  no 
reason  why  teachers  should  not  be  represented  on  boards  of 
education  as  they  are  beginning  to  be  represented  on  col- 
lege boards  of  trustees.  With  both  types  of  board,  in  any 
event,  they  should  have  organized  channels  of  communica- 
tion and  conference.  The  rapid  increase  of  teachers'  unions 
among  all  ranks  from  the  elementary  school  to  the  univer- 
sity, whatever  may  be  thought  of  its  wisdom,  at  least  re- 
veals a  new  initiative  and  a  new  group  consciousness  that 
are  bound  to  give  teachers  better  professional  standing. 

These  two  major  disadvantages  of  teaching,  poor  salaries 
and  lack  of  professional  control  and  responsibility,  underlie 
its  other  disadvantages,  low  standards  of  professional  train- 
ing and  meager  opportunities  for  professional  improvement 
and  personal  and  social  life.  A  valuable  study  made  under 
the  auspices  of  the  National  Education  Association  ^  asserts 
that  only  about  twenty-five  per  cent  of  the  school  teachers 
of  the  United  States  have  had  training  extending  even  two 
years  beyond  the  high  school,  that  about  four  million  chil- 
dren (or  a  fifth  of  those  enrolled  in  elementary  schools)  are 

'  E.  S.  Evenden.  Teachers'  Salaries  and  Salary  Schedules  (1919), 
9.  2.  See  also  Know  and  Help  Your  Schools.  Inquiry  Number  One. 
American  City  Bureau   (1920). 


38o       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

taught  by  teachers  less  than  twenty-one  years  of  age  "with 
little  or  no  high  school  training,  with  no  professional  prep- 
aration for  their  work,  and  who  are,  in  a  great  majority  of 
cases,  products  of  the  same  schools  in  which  they  teach." 
Fully  forty  per  cent  of  teachers  are  under  twenty-five  years 
of  age,  and  the  majority  of  teachers  remain  in  the  pro- 
fession less  than  five  years.  The  "teaching  turnover"  in 
the  smaller  schools  approaches  that  in  the  low-paid  indus- 
tries. The  United  States  Commissioner  of  Education  in  his 
report  for  1918  does  not  venture  to  set  as  a  practical  mini- 
mum of  preparation  for  teachers  anything  more  than  four 
years  of  high  school  and  at  least  one  year  of  professional 
training.  The  average  of  all  teachers'  salaries  in  1918  was 
only  $630.34.  Dr.  Evenden  finds  that  salaries  in  1918-1919 
in  392  cities  reporting  showed  a  maximum  of  $2,200  and 
a  median  of  $856  for  teachers  below  the  seventh  grade ;  a 
maximum  of  $2,300  and  a  median  of  $951  for  teachers  of 
the  last  two  grades ;  a  maximum  of  $3,000  and  a  median  of 
$1,224  for  high  school  teachers.  The  Survey  asked  not 
long  since:  "Is  Teaching  a  Sweated  Trade?"  A  pungent 
article  in  the  Atlantic  ^  suggests  that  it  is  an  occupation 
making  use  of  child  labor. 

From  such  facts  it  is  obvious  that  the  majority  of  teach- 
ers, like  the  majority  of  routine  clerical  workers,  look  upon 
their  work  as  a  stop-gap  occupation,  and  are  in  no  sense 
truly  professional.  The  burdens  of  professional  responsi- 
bility and  leadership  in  education  consequently  fall  to-day 
upon  the  twenty-five  per  cent  of  teachers  with  normal  or 
college  training  and  upon  the  institutions  sending  them  forth. 
The  day  has  gone  by  for  the  college  graduate  to  think  that 
she  belongs  as  a  teacher  only  in  the  secondary  school  or  the 
college,  and  has  no  need  of  further  preparation,  for  the 
normal  graduate  to  think  that  she  has  no  need  of  university 
courses.  Crowded  university  summer  schools  testify  that 
this  latter  idea  is  passing.  A  recent  Carnegie  Foundation 
report  ^  urges  that  the  name  "normal  school"  be  dropped, 

*A.  R.  Brubacker.  Plain  Talk  to  Teachers.  Atlantic  Monthly. 
December,  IQ19. 

*  The  Professional  Preparation  of  Teachers  for  American  Public 
Schools.     Bulletin  Number  Fourteen  (1920). 


EDUCATIONAL  SERVICES  381 

and  that  these  institutions  be  made  an  integral  part  of  the 
system  of  professional  schools  attached  to  the  state  uni- 
versity. It  also  makes  a  strong  plea  for  the  professionally 
trained  teacher  to  continue  her  work  after  marriage,  point- 
ing out  the  value  of  such  identification  with  the  community. 
The  fact  that  ninety  per  cent  of  the  school  population  is 
in  the  elementary  school  and  will  go  no  further,  and  that 
the  elementary  school  is  thus  the  great  public  agency  in 
matters  of  child  health,  child  mental  hygiene,  and  a  true 
"Americanization"  for  both  native  and  foreign  born,  makes 
it  imperative  to  put  the  most  thoroughly  trained  teachers 
at  its  service  and  incumbent  upon  the  colleges  and  uni- 
versities to  equip  them  adequately. 

To  assist  in  raising  the  standards  of  teaching  to  a  genu- 
inely professional  level,  Dr.  Evenden  suggests  that  initial 
salaries  be  based  upon  the  amount  of  education,  and  that 
no  differences  be  made  between  elementary  and  high  school 
teach'ers.  His  salary  schedule,  proposed  in  1919,  is  as  fol- 
lows, with  a  reduction  of  $200  for  cities  under  25,000  in- 
habitants to  correspond  to  their  lower  cost  of  living: 

AMOUNT  MINIMAL  ANNUAL  MAXIMAL 

OF  EDUCATION  SALARY  INCREASES  SALARY 

Normal  Diploma  $1,200 6  x  $100 $1,800 

A.  B.  Degree   $1400 10  x  $100 $2,400 

A.  M.  Degree  $1,600 10  x  $100 $2,600 

Ph.  D.  Degree  $2,000 10  x  $100 $3,000 

The  United  States  Commissioner  of  Education  has  rec- 
ommended a  minimum  teachers'  salary  of  $1,800,  and  the 
American  Federation  of  Teachers  a  minimum  of  $2,000. 
All  recent  authorities  agree  that  the  financial  and  social 
distinctions  between  elementary  and  high  school  teachers 
must  be  done  away  with  as  rapidly  as  possible.  Dr.  Even- 
den's  discussion  of  principles  governing  salary  schedules 
and  promotions  is  w^ell  worth  careful  attention.  Under  his 
plan,  teachers  of  the  various  degrees  of  educational  prep- 
aration would  be  chosen  as  of  old  on  the  basis  of  individual 
fitness ;  those  with  successful  experience  would  begin  at  a 
salary  above  the  minimum  to  which  .their  education  entitled 
them.     He  has  a  special  scale  for  heads  of  departments, 


382        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

special  supervisors,  and  principals,  and  suggests  ways  in 
which  exceptional  ability  and  service  may  fairly  be  re- 
warded above  the  maximum.  As  a  practical  measure  of 
the  cost  of  living  in  different  communities,  he  asked  super- 
intendents the  cost  of  suitable  board  and  room  for  a  teacher. 
He  presents  an  estimate  made  by  an  expert  in  living  condi- 
tions of  the  percentage  of  salary  at  different  levels  that 
should  go  to  these  two  items. 

SALARY  Per  cent  for  room  and  board 

$i,8oo   42  per  cent 

$1,200    50  per  cent 

$900    57  per  cent 

Such  a  percentage  might  well  be  worked  out  for  clothing, 
which  is  always  a  heavy  item  in  a  teacher's  budget  and  the 
increased  cost  of  which  since  1914  has  considerably  exceeded 
that  of  food.  The  minimum  budget  prepared  by  the  Bureau 
of  Labor  Statistics  for  a  woman  government  clerk  ^  pro- 
vides a  convenient  parallel,  although  it  is  on  a  meager  scale. 

The  importance  of  raising  teaching  to  full  professional 
status  has  never  been  so  widely  recognized,  and  popular  in- 
terest in  education  has  never  been  so  widespread  nor  so 
little  satisfied  with  things  as  they  are.  The  high  percentage 
of  illiteracy  discovered  in  the  American  forces  during  the 
war  and  the  war-time  agitation  regarding  non-English- 
speaking  foreigners  have  led  to  a  somewhat  excessive  con- 
centration upon  the  mere  ability  to  speak,  read,  and  write 
English.  But  these  more  superficial  considerations  have  in 
their  turn  led  to  a  fresh  realization  of  the  functions  and  pos- 
sibilities of  education  in  a  democracy  made  up  of  all  the 
peoples  of  the  earth.  The  "Smith-Towner"  bill,  now  before 
Congress,  creates  a  federal  Department  of  Education  with 
a  secretary  at  its  head  sitting  in  the  President's  cabinet,  in 
place  of  the  present  subordinate  Bureau  of  Education  in 
the  Department  of  the  Interior;  authorizes  the  consolidation 
under  it  of  the  thirty-odd  independent  agencies  under  the 
federal  government  concerned  in  one  way  or  another  with 
education ;  and  allots  one  hundred  million  dollars  a  year 
to  all  states  meeting  certain  educational  standards  for  the 

^Monthly  Labor  Revieiu.     January,  1920. 


EDUCATIONAL  SERVICES  383 

abatement  of  illiteracy,  native  and  foreign,  the  improvement 
of  teachers'  salaries  and  professional  preparation,  especially 
for  rural  schools,  the  encouragement  of  health  education 
and  health  agencies.  Provision  is  made  for  research  in 
these  fields.  While  many  educators  and  students  of  affairs 
do  not  approve  of  the  extremely  specific  requirements  of 
this  particular  bill,  nor  of  the  principle  of  direct  federal  aid 
to  the  states  for  education,  there  seems  to  be  general  agree- 
ment that  it  w^ould  be  advisable  to  recognize  the  national 
importance  of  education  by  establishing  a  department  of 
cabinet  rank  with  appropriations  of  sufficient  liberality  to 
enable  it  to  make  continuous  and  thorough  investigations 
and  reports  on  the  progress  and  character  of  education  in 
the  several  states.  The  stimulating  effect  of  such  compara- 
tive studies,  even  when  not  made  under  public  auspices,  is 
illustrated  by  the  famous  Carnegie  Foundation  Report  on 
Medical  Education  of  ten  years  ago,  and  by  Dr.  Leonard 
P.  Ayres's  recent  Index  Number  for  State  School  Systems,^ 
showing  their  relative  standing  in  certain  respects  for  the 
last  fi-fty  years.  Educational  leaders  are  urging  the  creation 
of  a  presidential  commission  on  education,  similar  to  the 
President's  Industrial  Commission,  to  make  a  compre- 
hensive study  and  report  before  the  passage  of  legislation 
by  Congress,  Education  is  traditionally  and  constitution- 
ally a  matter  for  state  control.  But  some  method  must 
be  devised  for  correcting  inequalities  of  educational  op- 
portunity, which  are  almost  as  great  within  states  as  be- 
tween states,  and  for  stimulating  public  interest  and  public 
support.  With  eighteen  thousand  school  buildings  closed 
and  almost  a  million  children  deprived  of  existing  educa- 
tional faciHties  through  lack  of  teachers ;  with  an  estimated 
shortage  of  from  thirty-five  thousand  to  ninety  thousand 
teachers  for  1920-1921,  including  fifteen  thousand  high 
school  teachers;  with  a  lowering  of  already  deplorably  low 
standards  of  preparation — it  is  no  wonder  that  there  is  talk 
of  a  national  crisis  in  education." 

^Russell  Sape  Foundation    (1020). 

'See  J.  A.  H.  Keith  and  William  C.  Baglev.  The  Nation  and 
the  Schools  (1920),  especially  Chapters  XVIII-XIX.  W.  D.  Lane. 
The  National  Crisis  in  Education.     Survey,  May  29,  1920. 


384        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

Meanwhile,  there  are  many  signs  of  popular  interest  and 
action.  Massachusetts  has  passed  a  law  providing  more 
equal  educational  facilities  throughout  the  state.  The  Arner- 
ican  Federation  of  Labor  has  an  enlightened  and  demo- 
cratic educational  program,  and  advocates  greater  responsi- 
bility and  independence  for  the  teacher.  A  national  com- 
mittee for  chamber  of  commerce  cooperation  with  the 
schools  is  made  up  of  an  equal  number  of  chamber  of  com- 
merce secretaries  and  superintendents  of  schools,  and  has 
enlisted  the  cooperation  of  over  four  hundred  chambers  in 
an  investigation  of  teachers'  salaries  and  other  educational 
problems.^  The  American  Army  Educational  Commission, 
which  carried  on  the  educational  work  for  our  overseas 
forces,  recommends  a  permanent  bureau  of  education  as 
part  of  the  machinery  of  the  League  of  Nations,  and  says 
that  "education  has  become  the  chief  concern  of  statesmen." 
An  Institute  of  International  Education  has  been  estab- 
lished in  New  York  to  facilitate  the  exchange  of  professors 
and  students  between  Americ^an  and  European  educational 
institutions,  and  to  act  as  a  clearing-house  of  educational 
information.  It  is  administering  a  large  number  of  ex- 
change fellowships  and  scholarships,  among  them  the  Rose 
Sidgwick  Memorial  Fellowship  for  British  university 
women.     Others  are  open  to  women. 

In  view  of  the  urgent  and  far-reaching  demand  for  teach- 
ers adequately  prepared  to  deal  with  the  manifold  and  en- 
larging problems  of  modern  education,  the  universities  and 
colleges  are  confronted  by  new  educational  responsibilities. 
Greater  numbers  of  teachers  will  be  educated  by  them,  and 
there  will  be  closer  relations  of  some  kind  between  them  and 
the  normal  and  training  schools.  Professional  training 
proper  for  teaching  as  for  other  professions  is  a  function 
of  the  university  and  not  of  the  college  of  liberal  arts. 
Teachers  College  of  Columbia  University  is  on  a  graduate 
basis;  Harvard  University  has  just  established  a  Graduate 
School  of  Education  and  Yale  is  doing  likewise;  the  Uni- 
versity of  Chicago  and  other  universities  have  schools  giv- 
ing the  master's  and  doctor's  degrees  in  this  field.  Many 
of  the  colleges  have  undergraduate  departments  and  courses 

^ Know  and  Help  Your  Schools  (Pamphlet,  1920). 


EDUCATIONAL  SERVICES  385 

in  education ;  but  their  relation  to  professional  training  for 
teaching  has  never  been  made  wholly  clear.  Some  of  them 
are  doing  excellent  work;  others  are  concessions  to  state 
requirements  for  teachers,  and  win  little  respect  from  either 
faculty  or  students.  They  are  a  hybrid  sort  of  thing,  neither 
truly  professional  nor  truly  liberal.  But  there  is  a  legiti- 
mate place  and  a  genuine  need  for  pre-professional  courses 
in  education  in  the  undergraduate  curriculum,  dealing  with 
the  school  as  one  of  the  most  important  of  modern  social 
institutions,  with  the  history  of  educational  practices  and 
ideals  as  related  to  social  development,  with  the  psychologi- 
cal trends  and  responses  of  the  child  that  make  him  sus- 
ceptible of  both  right  and  wrong  education,  and  with  psy- 
chological measurements.  Courses  of  this  sort  are  certainly 
as  liberalizing  as  courses  in  charities  and  corrections,  indus- 
trial and  political  history,  labor  problems,  and  abnormal 
psychology.  Students  do  not  become  aware  of  educational 
problems  and  the  modern  significance  of  education  merely 
through  going  to  college.  Without  such  courses,  they  lack 
an  element  ol  good  citizenship ;  and  if  they  begin  to  teach 
without  professional  training,  they  are  likely  to  inflict  upon 
their  pupils  what  has  been  termed  "watered  college  or  cold 
school."  With  these  courses,  they  are  far  more  likely  to 
perceive  the  need  of  proper  professional  study.  There  is 
a  good  deal  to  be  said  for  giving  undergraduate  courses 
in  education  not  in  a  special  department  but  in  the  several 
departments  of  history,  sociology,  and  psychology  in  which 
they  naturally  fall,  with  some  provision  for  coordinated 
administration. 

In  addition  to  better  salaries  and  better  professional  tram- 
ing,  though  dependent  upon  them,  are  certain  other  changes 
that  must  be  made  in  the  opportunities  of  a  teacher  in  order 
to  enable  teaching  not  merely  to  hold  its  own  but  to  take 
the  leading  position  among  the  professions  that  its  impor- 
tance warrants.  Modern  teachers  must  be  of  vigorous  and 
growing  personality  with  varied  resources  and  contacts  with 
life;  and  the  conditions  of  their  work  must  not  be  such  as 
to  shut  them  out  from  participation  in  the  affairs  of  their 
day  and  their  community.  Teaching  can  no  longer  be  a 
secluded  and  monotonous  occupation.    Moreover,  it  must  be 


386        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

clearly  recognized  that  good  modern  teaching  makes  heavy 
demands  upon  the  mental  and  physical  energy  of  teachers, 
and  requires  various  provisions  for  their  reinvigoration. 
"Sabbatical  years"  are  needed  not  only  by  college  teachers 
but  by  teachers  in  ever}''  grade  of  the  service ;  and  these 
leaves  should  not  all  be  given  according  to  one  plan  but 
according  to  various  types  of  teacher  and  kinds  of  work. 
Teachers  whose  interest  is  primarily  in  research  are  prob- 
ably well  served  by  the  existing  method;  teachers  who  ex- 
pend themselves  in  notably  good  teaching  are  likely  to  re- 
quire shorter  and  more  frequent  leaves ;  teachers  whose 
abilities  are  markedly  administrative  need  opportunities  to 
see  what  others  are  doing.  Sometimes  part-time  work  for 
a  year  or  a  half-year  will  enable  a  teacher  to  finish  a  piece 
of  writing  or  to  serve  on  an  outside  committee.  Exchanges 
of  teachers  between  institutions,  particularly  when  they  are 
situated  in  different  parts  of  the  country,  are  growing  in 
favor  and  bring  new  ideas  and  refreshment  of  spirit. 
There  is  much  to  be  said  for  exchanges  between  college 
and  secondary  teachers.  War-service  has  shown  the  ad- 
vantages of  the  teacher's  taking  up  temporarily  some  other 
type  of  work,  allied  to  his  own  field.  Institutions  are  likely 
to  continue  and  extend  the  practice  of  "lending"  members 
of  their  faculties  not  only  to  the  government  but  to  social 
and  industrial  organizations.  The  introduction  of  the  four- 
quarter  system  in  both  colleges  and  schools  would  further 
flexibility  in  these  arrangements,  and  would  make  education 
more  responsive  to  the  needs  of  the  times.  Dr.  Edwin 
F.  Gay  in  an  article  entitled  Does  a  University  Career 
Offer  No  Future?  points  out  the  new  position  and  the 
new  function  of  higher  institutions  in  national  life.  "They 
are  now  expected  not  only  to  transmit  the  store  of  usable 
knowledge  but  to  add  to  it  by  research  on  all  sides ;  they 
are  looked  to  increasingly  for  the  training  of  teachers  and 
administrators  for  the  lower  schools,  thus  bringing  the 
university  in  closer  touch  with  the  great  masses  of  the 
population ;  they  are  under  constant  pressure  to  meet  the 
new  needs  of  a  new  industrial  society  by  new,  specialized 
instruction." 

Teachers  of  special  subjects  and  of  special  groups  are 


EDUCATIONAL  SERVICES  387 

increasing  in  number  and  importance,  and  are  finding  im- 
proved and  widespread  facilities  for  preparation.  In  con- 
nection with  school  systems  are  teachers  of  art,  music, 
physical  education,  "manual  training,"  "home  economics," 
commercial  subjects,  kindergartens,  as  well  as  supervisors 
in  these  fields.  There  are  teachers  of  retarded,  defective, 
and  exceptionally  bright  children ;  teachers  in  technical  and 
commercial  high  schools ;  teachers  in  trade,  agricultural,  and 
other  vocational  schools ;  teachers  of  applied  arts  and  handi- 
crafts ;  teachers  of  play,  recreation,  folk-dancing  and 
pageantry;  teachers  of  gardening  and  farming;  teachers  in 
factory  "vestibule  schools,"  in  department  stores,  and  in 
offices;  teachers  in  institutions  for  the  atypical;  teachers 
of  "occupational  therapy";  teachers  in  reformatories  and 
prisons  ;  teachers  in  professional  schools  ;  teachers  in  various 
"extension  systems"  and  classes  for  adults;  teachers  in 
"trade  union  colleges."  Actual  "shop"  or  "field"  practice  is 
coming  to  be  considered  a  necessary  part  of  their  equipment, 
especially  in  order  that  they  may  supervise  their  students 
in  such  work.  The  Federal  Board  for  Vocational  Educa- 
tion, working  through  the  states,  is  standardizing  and  co- 
ordinating the  preparation  of  teachers  in  agriculture,  trades, 
home  economics,  commerce,  and  retail  salesmanship.  The 
social  bearings  of  modern  education  make  it  necessary  for 
special  teachers  to  have  an  adequate  foundation  of  liberal 
education,  as  well  as  thorough  training  in  their  techniques 
and  in  the  larger  professional  aspects  of  teaching. 

Teachers  of  "special  classes"  in  the  public  schools,  of 
trades  and  industries,  of  non-English-speaking  children  and 
adults  both  native  and  foreign-born,  combine  to  a  peculiar 
extent  the  functions  of  teacher  and  "social  worker."  But 
vocational  advisers  or  counselors  and  visiting  teacher.s^  or 
"home-and-school  visitors"  are  the  real  "case  workers"  in 
the  educational  field.  They  need  specific  training  and  ex- 
perience in  teaching  and  in  certain  aspects  of  social  and 
industrial  work,  as  well  as  familiarity  with  mental  hygiene 
and  at  least  the  results  of  psychological  tests.  Although 
the  work  of  one  is  primarily  preventive  and  constructive 
and  of  the  other  remedial,  their  lines  often  cross ;  and  both 
have  recourse  to  psychological  and  vocational  laboratories 


388       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

or  clinics,  such  as  the  Cincinnati  Vocation  Bureau  and  the 
recently  established  psychological  clinic  in  Louisville.  Some 
university  laboratories  provide  these  facilities  for  the  schools 
of  the  community. 

In  vocational  guidance,  methods  are  still  experimental 
and  admittedly  imperfect;  but  much  active  thinking  has 
been  generated  by  the  war.  It  is  an  educational  service 
of  peculiar  delicacy  and  difficulty.  It  may  perhaps  be 
most  fruitfully  regarded  as  one  aspect  of  a  continuous  edu- 
cational guidance,  which  must  be  given  by  school  and  so- 
ciety in  cooperation,  and  which  must  never  harden  into 
set  practices.  There  is  a  tendency  in  the  schools  as  well  as 
in  the  colleges  (discussed  in  Chapter  XXI)  to  lay  the  chief 
educational  emphasis  upon  vocational  information  through 
opening  to  the  student  the  main  fields  of  occupation,^  show- 
ing the  vocational  bearings  of  the  curriculum,  and  mak- 
ing preliminary  tests  of  ability  and  aptitude  in  order  to 
give  him  a  basis  for  handling  himself  wisely  and  objec- 
tively. Personnel  specifications,  dealt  with  in  Chapter  III, 
are  an  important  aid.  Actual  placement  is  being  made  more 
and  more  through  junior  sections  of  public  employment 
offices,  special  non-commercial  bureaus,  and  personnel  de- 
partments of  industries,  with  which  the  school  must  be  in 
close  contact.  But  placement  itself  is  not  an  educational 
function.  The  National  Vocational  Guidance  Association 
is  again  active.^  Various  universities  have  given  courses  in 
vocational  guidance  for  teachers ;  and  many  cities,  notably 
Boston,  Cincinnati,  Chicago,  Grand  Rapids,  Rochester,  have 
vocational  guidance  systems  of  different  sorts  as  part  of 
their  public  school  activities.  Others  have  vocational  guid- 
ance bureaus  under  private  auspices.  Settlement  houses, 
the  Christian  Associations,  and  other  agencies  dealing  with 
boys  and  girls  and  young  people  employ  vocational  advisers. 
The  bureaus  of  occupations  for  trained  women  have  laid 
great  emphasis  upon  their  function  of  guidance.  A  Bureau 
of  Vocational   Information   has  been  established   in  New 

*See  F.  J.  Allen.    A  Guide  to  the  Study  of  Occupations  (1921). 

'  See  reports  of  committees  on  machinery  of  placement  and  com- 
munity organization  for  vocational  guidance.  Bulletin  of  National 
Committee  of  Bureaus  of  Occupations.    February,  1920. 


EDUCATIONAL  SERVICES  389 

York  by  experienced  college  women.  A  bulletin  of  the 
United  States  Bureau  of  Education  gives  over  nine  hundred 
high  schools  reporting  vocational  guidance.^ 

Visiting  teachers  are  to  schools  what  medical  social  work- 
ers are  to  hospitals.  They  follow  any  child  giving  evidence 
of  school  or  home  difficulties  into  his  home  and  neighbor- 
hood, and  study  and  treat  the  situation  as  the  class  teacher 
is  not  able  to  do,  bringing  to  bear  all  necessary  cooperating 
agencies.  About  twenty  cities  employ  these  teachers  under 
the  board  of  education,  including  Worcester,  Hartford, 
Rochester,  Cleveland,  Columbus,  Chicago,  and  Minneapolis. 
In  Boston,  Philadelphia,  and  Kansas  City  they  are  main- 
tained in  the  public  schools  by  private  associations.  New 
York  has  both  methods.  California  in  191 5  passed  a  per- 
missive "home  teacher"  act  authorizing  school  boards  to 
send  teachers  into  the  homes  to  instruct  mothers  and  chil- 
dren in  the  English  language,  household  duties,  and  citi- 
zenship. This  is  primarily  an  "Americanization"  measure. 
The  National  Association  of  Visiting  Teachers  and  Home 
and  School  Visitors,  organized  in  1916,  is  now  making  a 
survey  of  the  work  of  visiting  teachers  throughout  the 
country.  The  Federal  Children's  Bureau  indorses  the  work 
of  the  visiting  teacher  in  connection  with  its  campaign 
for  keeping  children  in  school ;  and  the  mental  hygienist 
finds  her  an  invaluable  aid.  It  is  work  that  requires  spe- 
cial professional  and  personal  equipment,  but  has  a  high 
degree  of  social  usefulness.  It  is  distinct  from  the  work 
of  the  attendance  or  truant  officer  in  that  its  emphasis  is 
on  prevention.  A  visiting  teacher  should  preferably  have 
had  classroom  experience,  but  the  case-hardened  teacher  is 
not  suited  to  this  work.'  The  school  psychological  examiner 
is  discussed  in  Chapter  XVII. 

Of  other  educational  services,  educational  administra- 
tion grows  most  directly  out  of  teaching,  since  it  is  com- 
monly as  a  teacher  that  the  administrator  tests  his  aptitude, 

*  Vocational  Guidance  in  Secondary  Education.  Bulletin  19,  iqtS. 
See  also  Vocational  Guidance  and  the  Public  Schools.  Bulletin  24. 
1918;  John  M.  Brewer,  The  Vocational  Guidance  Movement  (igi8)  ; 
and  Mever  Blonmficld,   Rcadinqs  in   Vocational  Guidance    (igi6>. 

•See  David  Holbrook.  The  Teacher  Who  Came  Back.  The 
Family.    February,  192 1. 


390       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

and  the  actual  teaching  experience  is  of  inestimable  value 
in  dealing  with  administrative  problems.  But  the  princi- 
pal, superintendent,  president  or  dean  may  likewise  nowa- 
days secure  special  professional  training  in  problems  of 
administration.  It  is  important,  wherever  possible,  for  the 
administrator  to  continue  to  do  some  teaching  in  order  to 
keep  in  mind  essential  teaching  problems  and  to  retain 
actual  contacts  with  students.  Deans  of  women  in  coeduca- 
tional universities,  whose  position  is  sometimes  ill-defined,^ 
need  to  insist  upon  a  full  position  on  the  faculty  and  pref- 
erably upon  a  certain  amount  of  teaching.  Nothing  so 
wins  the  respect  of  students  for  administrative  officers. 
Men  still  occupy  the  larger  number  of  administrative  posts 
in  education.  But  there  are  women  in  all  the  types  of  posi- 
tion mentioned  above.  In  the  west,  nine  women  are  state 
superintendents  of  education  and  very  commonly  county 
superintendents,  of  whom  there  are  now  some  seven  hun- 
dred and  twenty.  A  woman  state  superintendent  is  presi- 
dent of  the  National  Education  Association ;  a  woman  was 
for  a  number  of  years  superintendent  of  schools  in  Chi- 
cago; another  has  recently  become  one  in  Los  Angeles. 
Women  city  superintendents  and  high-school  principals 
are  likely  to  increase.  There  are  of  course  many  women 
heads  of  private  schools. 

There  are  also  administrative  positions  in  connection 
with  educational  associations,  local  and  national,  and  in  con- 
nection with  city  and  -state  boards  of  education.  A  dozen 
cities  or  so,  including  New  York,  Buffalo,  Philadelphia, 
Providence,  Worcester,  Chicago,  Baltimore,  and  Richmond, 
maintain  voluntary  public  education  associations  to  study 
the  operations  of  the  local  school  system  and  to  keep  citi- 
zens informed  and  interested  in  their  efficient  administra- 
tion. 

Educational  investigation  and  research  are  of  many  kinds 
and  carried  on  under  various  auspices,  public  and  private. 
The  United  States  Bureau  of  Education  in  the  Department 

*  Sce_  Lois  Flimban  Alatthev/s.  The  Dean  of  Women  (1916). 
There  is  a  National  Conference  of  Deans  of  Women  meeting  with 
the  Department  of  Superintendence  of  the  National  Education  Asso- 
ciation, and  a  Deans'  Conference  in  connection  with  the  biennial 
meetings  of  the  Association  of  Collegiate  Alumnae. 


EDUCATIONAL  SERVICES  391 

of  the  Interior  has  for  many  years  performed  a  valuable 
service  in  collecting  and  distributing  statistical  and  other 
information.  It  is  cruelly  limited  by  meager  appropriations, 
but  issues  a  useful  series  of  bulletins  and  biennial  statistical 
reports.  Of  late  years,  both  it  and  the  Children's  Bureau  of 
the  Department  of  Labor  have  carried  on  campaigns  for 
the  improvement  of  child  health  through  the  schools.  The 
Children's  Bureau  has  also  conducted  a  "Back  to  School" 
campaign.  The  Department  of  Agriculture  and  more  re- 
cently the  Department  of  Commerce  have  also  engaged  in 
important  educational  investigations.  A  recent  estimate, 
however,  finds  that  the  federal  government  spends  only  one 
per  cent  of  its  annual  appropriations  for  education  and  re- 
search. The  American  Council  on  Education,  arising  as  a 
w^ar-emergency  measure,  represents  the  colleges,  universi- 
ties, and  professional  schools  at  the  capital,  and  acts  as  a 
medium  of  communication  between  them  and  the  federal 
government.  The  National  Education  Association,  repre- 
senting especially  the  public  school  systems  of  the  country, 
likewise  has  a  central  office  in  Washington.  Many  state 
departments  of  education  and  a  few  large  city  school  sys- 
tems, maintain  bureaus  of  investigation  and  research.  The 
Carnegie  Foundation  for  the  Advancement  of  Teaching, 
the  General  Education  Board  of  the  Rockefeller  Foundation, 
and  the  Department  of  Education  of  the  Russell  Sage 
Foundation  conduct  intensive  educational  investigations^ 
and  are  frequently  called  in  as  experts  to  make  special 
surveys  and  studies  for  states,  communities,  and  organiza- 
tions. The  Carnegie  Foundation  has  made  a  sur\'ey  of  the 
educational  system  of  the  state  of  Vermont,  and  its  recent 
bulletin  on  the  professional  training  of  teachers  is  based 
on  a  study  of  the  Missouri  system  of  normal  and  training 
schools.  The  General  Education  Board  issued  in  1919  an 
eight-volume  report  on  the  Gary  School  Syston.  The 
Education  Survey  in  25  small  volumes,  made  in  1916 
by  the  Cleveland  Foundation,  enlisted  the  cooperation 
of  a  large  staff  of  experts.  The  new  Commonwealth 
Foundation  has  made  large  appropriations  for  educational 
inquiry.  The  Bureau  of  Education  has  been  invited  to 
make  a  number  of  state  surveys.     Special  studies  are  con- 


392       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

stantly  being  made  of  problems  of  teaching  and  adminis- 
tration, and  the  scope  of  research  in  educational  psychology 
is  steadily  widening.  Demonstration  and  experimental 
schools  are  being  established.  A  group  of  people  in  New 
York  maintain  a  Bureau  of  Educational  Experiments. 
These  various  forms  of  work  have  developed  their  own 
techniques,  in  which  a  worker  must  be  trained.  They  call 
for  people  with  the  equipment  of  a  doctor  of  philosophy  in 
education.  Sometimes  those  with  a  master's  degree  can 
gain  training  and  experience  as  assistants  on  special  studies. 
Much  of  this  work  is  on  a  piece  basis,  and  is  consequently 
limited  in  duration.  But  there  are  a  few  salaried  positions 
for  experts  in  educational  research  in  connection  with  edu- 
cational foundations,  federal  and  state  educational  bureaus, 
boards,  and  commissions,  and  educational  organizations. 
There  are  chances  to  become  experts  in  some  of  the  nev/er 
fields.  Women  as  yet  have  had  small  place  in  educational 
research. 

In  spite  of  the  defections  in  late  years,  teaching  is  still 
the  most  important  single  profession  for  women;  and  it 
promises  far  more  satisfactory  professional  opportunities  in 
the  near  future  than  it  has  provided  in  the  past.  The 
1910  census  shows  that  of  over  seven  hundred  thousand 
women  listed  as  professional,  66.4  per  cent  were  teachers 
in  colleges  and  schools.  Women  teachers  were  28.9  per 
cent  of  all  professional  workers,  80  per  cent  of  all  school 
teachers,  and  18  per  cent  of  college  teachers.^  Of  college 
women  at  work  in  1915  according  to  the  Association  of 
Collegiate  Alumnae  census,  70.5  per  cent  were  teachers.  The 
1920  census  will  show  losses  from  these  figures,  but  by 
1930  teaching  may  have  become  in  a  new  sense  the  dominant 
profession  for  women. 

*A  committee  of  the  American  Association  of  University  Pro- 
fessors is  looking  into  the  distribution  of  men  and  women  on  uni- 
versity and  college  faculties.  In  this  connection,  see  Cora  F.  Mc- 
Intire,  A  Venture  in  Statistics.  Journal  of  Association  of  Col- 
legiate Alumnae,  October,  1918,  and  Opportunities  and  Salaries  of 
Women  in  the  Teaching  Profession  in  Nebraska  in  the  same  publi- 
cation, March-April,  1920. 


CHAPTER  XX 

THE    SECURING    OF    EMPLOYMENT    BY    WOMEN    PROFESSIONAL 

WORKERS 

Professional  education,  professional  associations,  and 
professional  employment  are  intimately  connected,  and  must 
be  considered  as  aspects  of  a  single  larger  problem.  That 
problem  we  are  just  beginning  to  formulate  as  the  problem 
of  professional  relations  and  to  attack  concretely  and  con- 
structively as  the  industrial  world  has  been  attacking  the 
problem  of  industrial  relations.  The  two  movements  rep- 
resent attempts  from  different  angles  to  arrive  at  some 
more  satisfactory  adjustment  of  working  relations  as  a 
whole.  They  constantly  touch  and  reinforce  each  other, 
and  are  likely  to  become  progressively  coordinated.  It  is 
too  soon  for  either  movement  to  forecast  its  development 
with  assurance.  But  our  thinking  on  all  matters  of  employ- 
ment has  been  raised  to  an  entirely  new  plane. 

During  the  war  period  there  were  three  outstanding  de- 
velopments affecting  the  employment  of  professional  work- 
ers and  arising  out  of  the  imperative  and  increasing  war 
demand  for  experts  of  nearly  every  variety.  First,  the 
establishment  of  special  personnel  bureaus  or  departments 
by  war-services  of  all  kinds— governmental,  patriotic,  so- 
cial, industrial  and  commercial;  second,  the  establishment 
under  the  federal  Department  of  Labor  in  cooperation  with 
the  states  of  the  War  Emergency  United  States  Employ- 
ment Service  covering  the  country  with  some  nine  hundred 
offices,  providing  for  every  group  of  workers,  and  finally 
creating  a  special  professional  section  for  men  and  women ; 
third,  the  establishment  of  the  War  Department  Committee 
on  Classification  of  Personnel  in  the  Army,  already  de- 
scribed in  Chapter  III,  which  listed,  rated,  and  distributed 
officers  and  men  required  in  military  services,  including 

393 


394        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

many  professional  workers.  There  were  likewise  a  number 
of  subsidiary  undertakings  of  a  professional  character: 
registrations  and  distributions  of  workers  made  by  the  great 
professional  organizations — the  American  Medical  Associa- 
tion, the  American  Bar  Association,  the  American  Library 
Association,  the  American  Chemical  Society,  the  United  En- 
gineering Societies — and  by  such  organizations  as  the  MiH- 
tary  Training  Camps  Association,  the  Public  Service  Re- 
serve, and  the  Women's  Committee  of  the  Council  of  Na- 
tional Defence.  The  Intercollegiate  Intelligence  Bureau,  or- 
ganized in  Washington  by  a  group  of  college  officials  and 
cooperating  with  higher  educational  institutions  to  recruit 
workers  needed  by  the  government,  performed  a  useful 
service  until  early  in  1918,  when  it  was  superseded  by  more 
comprehensive  agencies.  Shortly  after  the  armistice  the 
United  States  Bureau  of  Education  estabhshed  a  special 
School  Board  Service  Section  to  deal  with  actual  and  threat- 
ened shortages  of  teachers  in  colleges  and  schools.  The 
Intercollegiate  Community  Service  Association  maintained 
an  office  in  New  York  for  the  recruiting  of  college  women 
for  service  overseas  with  the  Red  Cross,  the  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
canteen  service,  and  other  welfare  organizations. 

For  some  time  before  the  war  individual  methods  of 
securing  professional  employment  and  professional  work- 
ers had  been  recognized  as  haphazard,  wasteful,  and  gen- 
erally unsatisfactory ;  and  employment  agencies  and  bureaus 
of  various  kinds  for  professional  workers  were  growing 
in  number.  These  are  of  two  main  types :  agencies  con- 
ducted for  profit  and  agencies  conducted  under  the  auspices 
of  professional  or  educational  associations.  Of  the  agen- 
cies on  a  money-making  basis,  the  teachers'  agencies  have 
had  the  longest  and  on  the  whole  the  most  respectable  his- 
tory, although  they  have  varied  greatly  in  repute.  Some 
of  them  have  been  organized  on  a  country-wide  scale, 
and  are  experienced  in  employment  methods  and  in  meet- 
ing the  needs  of  teachers  and  schools.  But  the  standard 
colleges  and  many  of  the  better  private  schools  seldom 
use  them,  preferring  to  deal  directly  with  institutions  and 
with  applicants.  More  recent  in  origin  are  such  agencies 
as  the  Newspaper  Men's  Exchange  of  Springfield,  Massa- 


SECURING  OF  EMPLOYMENT  395 

chusetts,  the  Engineers'  Exchange  in  various  cities,  the  Na- 
tional Employment  Exchange  of  New  York,  the  Business 
Men's  Clearing  House  of  Chicago,  the  nurses'  registries. 
The  employment  agencies  m.aintained  by  typewriter  and 
other  commercial  machine  companies  place  occasional  pro- 
fessional workers.  While  many  of  these  agencies  are  en- 
tirely honest,  and  have  worked  out  employment  techniques 
that  are  worthy  of  study,  still  they  are  businesses  run  for 
profit,  and  their  incomes  depending  upon  fees  and  com- 
missions, they  are  tempted  to  move  people  about  rather  than 
to  consult  the  true  professional  interests  of  all  concerned. 
As  at  present  organized  and  supervised,  they  are  open  to 
many  of  the  objections  urged  against  fee-charging  agencies 
for  other  groups  of  workers.  In  all  of  them  lurks  the 
danger  of  exploiting  the  individual's  need  of  work  and 
ignorance  of  where  and  how  to  find  it.  The  professional 
worker's  frequent  distrust  of  fee-charging  agencies  is  due 
to  an  unformulated  notion  that  they  are  fundamentally 
unprofessional. 

Nevertheless,  these  agencies  were  the  first  to  realize  that 
the  elaborate  occupational  structure  of  modern  society  de- 
mands some  intermediary  service  which  shall  bring  worker 
and  employer  together  to  their  mutual  advantage.  For  them 
to  find  each  other  individually  has  become  increasingly  diffi- 
cult. Several  alternatives  remain.  The  service  may  be 
rendered  as  a  matter  of  private  business,  as  is  done  by  the 
agencies  just  described.  It  may  be  rendered  by  the  several 
occupational  groups,  independently  or  jointly,  as  is  done 
by  the  labor  unions  and  by  an  increasing  number  of  pro- 
fessions. It  may  be  rendered  as  a  matter  of  philanthropy, 
as  is  done  by  the  Young  Women's  Christian  Associations. 
It  may  be  rendered  as  a  matter  of  educational  convenience 
or  policy,  as  has  been  done  by  the  colleges  and  profes- 
sional schools  and,  in  a  somewhat  different  sense,  by  the 
bureaus  of  occupations  for  trained  women.  It  may  be 
rendered  as  a  necessary  public  service  by  the  government, 
federal,  state,  and  municipal,  and  paid  for  like  public 
education,  out  of  taxes. 

Employment  bureaus  maintained  by  professional  asso- 
ciations are  a  comparatively  recent  development,  and  until 


396       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

the  war  they  were  rather  tentative  affairs  without  much 
cooperation  with  one  another  or  with  other  employment 
movements.  One  of  the  earhest  and  most  efficient  is  the 
Employment  Bureau  of  the  Chemist's  Club  of  New  York. 
The  United  Engineering  Societies  likewise  maintain  an  em- 
ployment bureau.  The  National  Social  Workers'  Exchange 
was  established  in  191 7  with  the  backing  of  the  National 
Conference  of  Social  Work,  and  is  actively  working  to  raise 
professional  standards.  The  Art  Alliance  of  America  has 
a  bureau  chiefly  for  workers  in  applied  art.  The  national 
organizations  of  registered  nurses  had  adopted  before  the 
war  a  policy  of  establishing  their  own  nurses'  registries ;  and 
the  Red  Cross  organized  after  the  war  a  Bureau  of  Informa- 
tion for  Nurses,  with  their  cooperation,  which  acts  in  this 
capacity  on  a  national  scale.  In  fact,  whether  they  have 
organized  employment  bureaus  or  not,  all  professional  asso- 
ciations carry  on  employment  work  of  an  informal  char- 
acter through  professional  publications,  meetings,  and  per- 
sonal acquaintance  of  members.  In  associations  of  definite 
and  limited  membership,  such  as  the  American  Association 
of  Museums,  or  newly  organized  associations,  such  as  the 
Industrial  Relations  Association  of  America,  the  secre- 
tary  is  frequently  called  upon  to  do  more  work  of  an  em- 
ployment character  than  he  has  time,  inclination,  or  often 
equipment  to  do.  Many  a  college  president  or  professor 
attends  meetings  of  learned  societies  to  see  whether  he 
can  get  wind  of  likely  candidates  for  positions  in  his  in- 
stitution or  department.  War  developments,  however,  have 
taught  many  of  the  great  professional  organizations  that 
employment  work  carried  on  informally,  incidentally,  and 
amateurishly  is  almost  worse  than  useless.  They  are  be- 
ginning to  see  that  there  is  a  new  profession,  employment 
service,  with  a  growing  body  of  principles  and  techniques, 
for  which  workers  must  be  prepared  before  they  can  con- 
duct such  undertakings  successfully  for  any  group  of  work- 
ers, professional,  clerical,  or  industrial ;  that  essential  as 
it  is  for  each  profession  to  confront  and  study  its  own 
employment  problems,  there  are  serious  disadvantages  in 
having  each  maintain  an  independent  employment  bureau, 
inevitably  limited  and  yet  overlapping. 


SECURING  OF  EMPLOYMENT  397 

Professions  no  longer  operate  in  isolation.  Practically 
every  important  modern  undertaking  involves  the  closest  sort 
of  professional  cooperation.  The  professions  are  increas- 
ingly conscious  of  their  obligations  to  one  another  and  to 
the  public  welfare.  Professional  associations  have  long 
maintained  committees  on  education,  which  have  had  to  do 
chiefly  with  the  standards  of  professional  schools  and  the 
subject-matter  of  professional  curricula.  In  the  future  they 
are  likely  to  concern  themselves  more  intimately  with  the 
supply  and  distribution  of  young  professional  workers  and 
to  realize  the  vital  connections  between  education  and  em- 
ployment. There  are  many  problems  common  to  all  the 
professions;  and  there  is  crying  need  of  some  centralized 
machinery  which  shall  study  comparatively  problemsof  pro- 
fessional distribution,  preparation,  training  in  service,  and 
so  on,  putting  the  experience  of  each  profession  at  the  dis- 
posal of  the  others.  Such  a  system  must  focus  upon  the 
growing-point  of  all  professions,  the  education,  employ- 
ment, and  supervision  of  the  younger  generation  of  workers, 
although  it  will  likewise  concern  itself  with  workers  of 
every  degree  of  experience  and  competence.  It  may  well 
be  that  with  the  establishment  of  such  a  system,  profes- 
sional organizations  would  depute  to  it  the  actual  place- 
ment of  workers,  and  would  organize  their  own  bureaus  as 
cooperating  agencies  concerned  with  problems  of  education 
and  research  within  the  several  professions.  There  is  still 
much  to  be  learned  regarding  the  surpluses  and  shortages 
in  different  professions  and  in  different  parts  of  the  coun- 
try. Every  profession  needs  a  study  of  the  number  of  its 
practitioners  in  each  county  or  other  local  area  of  the  coun- 
try as  compared  with  the  total  population,  along  the  lines 
of  the  survey  of  physicians  made  in  1918  by  the  American 
Medical  Association.  Such  a  study  should  include  age- 
groups,  professional  and  general  education,  employment  on 
a  salaried  or  independent  basis,  membership  in  professional 
associations;  activities  of  these  organizations.^ 

In  1910,  college  women  were  instrumental  in  inaugurat- 
ing the  movement  for  city  bureaus  of  occupations  for 
trained  women  which  has  made  a  distinctive  contnl)Ution  to 
the  present  larger  movement  for  some  sort  of  nation-wide 


398       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

professional  employment  service  for  both  men  and  women. 
The  first  of  these  bureaus  was  established  by  the  Women's 
Educational  and  Industrial  Union  of  Boston,  an  institu- 
tion which  had  long  been  a  leader  in  promoting  the  vocational 
and  economic  welfare  of  women.  It  was  opened  in  Jan- 
uary, 19 lO,  with  Miss  Laura  Drake  Gill,  formerly  Dean  of 
Barnard  College,  as  Director,  and  has  been  popularly  known 
as  the  Boston  Appointment  Bureau,  although  its  present 
official  title  is  Bureau  of  Vocational  Advice  and  Appoint- 
ment. Since  191 1  Miss  Florence  Jackson  has  been  Direc- 
tor. In  the  autumn  of  that  year  a  second  bureau,  the  Inter- 
collegiate Bureau  of  Occupations  for  Trained  Women,  was 
opened  in  New  York  City  through  the  cooperative  efforts 
of  the  alumnae  clubs  and  associations  of  eight  women's 
colleges  and  the  women  graduates  of  Cornell  University. 
In  April,  1912,  the  Philadelphia  Bureau  of  Occupations  was 
established  under  the  auspices  of  the  Philadelphia  Branch 
of  the  Association  of  Collegiate  Alumnae  and  other  organi- 
zations of  women.  The  Chicago  Collegiate  Bureau  of  Oc- 
cupations followed  in  April,  1913,  under  the  auspices  of 
the  Association  of  Collegiate  Alumnae  and  various  college 
clubs  and  associations.  In  1914  the  Virginia  Bureau  of 
Vocations  for  Women  was  established  in  Richmond,  chiefly 
through  the  efforts  of  Dr.  O.  L.  Hatcher.  Its  function  is 
educational  and  advisory,  and  it  does  no  placement.  The 
year  1915  saw  the  establishment  of  the  Los  Angeles  Bureau 
of  Occupations  of  the  Women's  University  Club,  the  Pitts- 
burgh Collegiate  Vocational  Bureau  of  the  Pittsburgh  Col- 
lege Club,  and  the  Collegiate  Alumnae  Bureau  of  Occupa- 
tions in  Kansas  City,  under  the  auspices  of  the  local  branch 
of  that  association.  The  Detroit  Collegiate  Bureau  of  Oc- 
cupations was  established  in  1916;  the  Cleveland  and  Denver 
Bureaus  were  established  in  1917;  the  Minneapolis  Woman's 
Occupational  Bureau  late  in  1917,  and  the  Saint  Paul  Voca- 
tional Bureau  for  Trained  Women  early  in  1918.  Although 
these  bureaus  were  established,  administered,  and  sup- 
ported separately  and  in  various  ways,  they  organized  in 
191 7  a  National  Committee  of  Bureaus  of  Occupations 
which  has  since  held  conferences  twice  a  year  for  the  dis- 
cussion of  common  problems  and  policies. 


SECURING  OF  EMPLOYMENT  399 

The  bureaus  of  occupations  for  trained  women  arose 
as  a  result  of  the  growing  incHnation  of  educated  women 
to  go  into  ocupations  other  than  teaching,  which  became 
manifest  in  the  decade  between  1900  and  1910,  and  has 
since  become  so  pronounced  that  teaching  is  to-day  suf- 
fering from  a  dearth  of  recruits  of  the  highest  type.  The 
1915  census  of  college  women  showed  that  the  percentage 
of  those  in  non-teaching  occupations  increased  from  29.2 
per  cent  of  all  employed  between  1890  and  1900  to  33.7 
of  all  employed  between  1900  and  1910.  Our  schedules 
sent  to  the  colleges  in  the  summer  of  1919  asked  for  the 
initial  occupations  of  the  classes  of  1907,  1912,  1917,  1918, 
1919.  Many  colleges  were  unable  during  the  vacation  to 
furnish  this  information,  and  the  returns  for  1919  are  so 
incomplete  that  they  have  not  been  used.  Figures  also 
from  several  of  the  minor  colleges  are  too  small  to  be  fairly 
reduced  to  percentages.  But  the  following  table,  based  on 
returns  from  our  schedules,  indicates  the  trend  especially 
during  the  two  years  of  war.  Undoubtedly  the  status  of 
women  in  all  professions  will  be  substantially  improved  on 
account  of  the  war-time  experience  with  women  workers. 
But  the  revelation  of  the  primary  national  importance  of 
education,  the  present  acute  shortage  of  teachers,  and  the 
extension  of  educational  ideas  and  practices  into  the  occu- 
pations themselves,  are  bound  to  raise  the  professional 
standing  and  strengthen  the  appeal  of  teaching.  In  the 
table  little  difference  is  to  be  observed  between  the  liberal 
arts  colleges  and  the  institutions  providing  vocational  train- 
ing, although  individual  institutions  vary  considerably  in 
their  distribution  of  graduates  in  teaching  and  non-teaching 
occupations. 

Before  the  establishment  of  the  bureaus  of  occupations 
and  during  their  earlier  history,  there  was  general  ignorance 
and  uncertainty  regarding  the  opportunities  for  educated 
women  in  occupations  other  than  teaching,  the  actual  range 
and  character  of  these  occupations,  the  training  required 
for  them,  and  the  specific  modes  of  securing  employment 
in  them.  While  there  was  a  similar  lack  of  organized  in- 
formation for  educated  men,  the  situation  for  them  was 
rendered  far  less  difficult  through  the  assured  position  of 


400       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

Percentage  Table  of  Initial  Occupations  of  Women  Graduates 

OF  Representative  Institutions 


Institutions 

bo 

n 

IS 

o 

a 

V 

«5 

a 
0 

00 

bo 

.s 

a 

in 

c 
.2 

>-   & 

00 

tn 

C 

.2 

<u  D 

00 

bo 

a 
<u 
H 

C 
0 

u  Q. 
tu   3 

00 

Dates 

1907 

1912 

1917 

1918        1 

Barnard  

35-2 

64.8 

39- 

61. 

Mount  Hol- 
yoke 

93-8 

6.2 

84.7 

15-3 

47-9 

52.1 

49.6 

SO.4 

RadcliflFe  .... 

77.6 

22.4 

67.8 

32.^ 

62. 

38. 

44. 

56. 

Vassar 

77- 

23. 

52/ 

48.^ 

29.3 

70.7 

Wellesley  .... 

83.1 

16.9 

76.9 

23.1 

DePauw  Uni- 
versity *  . .  . 

100. 

77.3 

22.7 

54-5 

45-5 

48. 

52. 

Margaret 
Morrison,* 
Ca  r  negie 
School    of 
Ca  r  negie 
Institute    . . 

28. 

72. 

37.1 

62.9 

*  Figures  for  third  year  after  graduation. 
'Teaching  positions  largely  in  home  economics. 


men  in  the  occupational  world  and  their  access  to  business 
and  the  professions  through  relatives,  friends,  professional 
schools,  and  professional  organizations.  Nevertheless,  the 
difficulties  encountered  by  young  men  in  establishing  them- 
selves professionally  without  some  machinery  of  informa- 
tion and  placement  are  only  now  receiving  tardy  recognition 
and  attention.  The  ten  years'  experience  of  the  bureaus 
of  occupations  for  trained  women  in  dealing  with  the  diffi- 
culties of  a  professionally  emerging  and  unsophisticated 
group  of  workers,  in  the  face  of  hesitations  on  the  part  of 


SECURING  OF  EMPLOYMENT  401 

both  employers  and  educational  institutions,  has  much  to 
offer  to  any  program  for  a  professional  employment  service 
for  both  men  and  women  workers. 

From  the  beginning  the  bureaus  of  occupations  have  re- 
garded their  work  of  education,  information,  and  investiga- 
tion as  of  primary  importance;  their  work  of  placement  as 
secondary,  although  greatly  needed  both  as  an  aid  to  indi- 
viduals and  as  a  means  of  checking  the  authenticity  and 
timeliness  of  the  information  secured.  They  have  also 
come  to  recognize  the  value  of  following  up  placements  and 
of  studying  the  duration  of  professional  employment,  or 
what,  to  borrow  from  the  industrial  vocabulary,  may  be 
called  the  "professional  turnover."  They  have  seen  that 
their  work  of  vocational  education  must  include  not  only 
women  going  into  professional  occupations,  but  their  em- 
ployers, the  institutions  from  which  they  come,  and  the 
community  in  general.  As  an  integral  part  of  the  Women's 
Educational  and  Industrial  Union,  the  Boston  Appointment 
Bureau  has  been  a  pioneer  and  leader  in  matters  of  occu- 
pational education  and  information.  In  the  first  year  of 
its  existence  it  issued  a  survey  of  professional  and  semi- 
professional  occupations  for  women  entitled  Vocations  for 
the  Trained  Woman,  Part  i,  modeled  after  an  English  pub- 
lication called  the  Finger-Post,  and  the  first  book  of  the 
kind  in  this  country.  In  1914  and  1916  Parts  2  and  3  ap- 
peared, dealing  respectively  with  opportunities  for  women 
in  agriculture,  social  service,  secretarial  service,  and  real 
estate  in  Massachusetts  and  Boston,  and  with  opportunities 
for  women  in  domestic  science  throughout  the  country. 
Part  One,  issued  ten  years  ago,  is  both  out  of  print  and 
necessarily  out  of  date.  The  present  volume  is  an  attempt 
under  the  same  auspices  to  survey  the  field  afresh  in  the 
light  of  a  decade  of  active  development  culminating  in  the 
experiences  of  the  war.  The  Appointment  Bureau  likewise 
issued  early  in  its  career  a  number  of  small  bulletins  on 
specific  occupations  in  Boston ;  and  for  several  years  has 
held  a  series  of  conferences  during  the  winter  on  various 
occupational  fields  for  women,  addressed  by  prominent 
workers.  It  has  organized  clubs  for  young  professional 
workers,  and  has  twice  arranged  "social  service  excursions" 


402        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

to  Boston  for  women  undergraduate  students.  Its  more 
direct  relations  with  the  New  England  colleges  are  described 
in  the  next  chapter.  It  carries  on  an  extensive  correspon- 
dence on  vocational  matters,  and  is  visited  by  vocational 
workers  from  the  entire  country.  It  also  provides  an  ap- 
prenticeship course  in  professional  employment  service  for 
two  or  three  young  college  graduates  on  a  fellowship  basis, 
which  includes  training  visits  to  other  bureaus  of  occupa- 
tions. The  Intercollegiate  Bureau  of  Occupations  in 
New  York  developed  a  strong  information  department, 
and  made  intensive  studies  of  opportunities  for  women 
in  various  fields,  including  a  study  of  Opportunities  for 
Women  in  the  Municipal  Ciznl  Service  of  the  City  of 
Nezv  York,  issued  in  1918,  a  Classified  List  of  Vocations 
for  Trained  Women,  and  bulletins  on  women  in  industrial 
chemistry  and  in  scientific  work.  The  inheritor  of  its  in- 
formation department,  the  Bureau  of  Vocational  Informa- 
tion, established  early  in  1919,  has  issued  in  cooperation 
with  the  National  Board  of  Young  Women's  Christian 
Associations,  a  comprehensive  pamphlet  entitled :  Voca- 
tiotis  for  Business  and  Professional  IJ^omen,  and  is  issuing 
intensive  studies  of  women  in  chemistry,  law,  statistics,  and 
department  stores.  Other  bureaus  have  issued  useful  voca- 
tional material:  the  Philadelphia  Bureau,  in  1916,  a  series 
of  leaflets  prepared  by  Philadelphia  women  in  various  occu- 
pations ;  the  Cleveland  Bureau,  in  May,  1919,  a  bulletin  on 
Opportunities  for  Trained  Women  in  Cleveland  Factories; 
in  March,  1920,  another  on  Opportunities  in  Cleveland  for 
Wojnen  Trained  in  Domestic  Science  and  Home  Eco- 
nomics; the  Minneapolis  Bureau  in  1919  a  bulletin  on 
Women  in  Banking  in  the  City  of  Minneapolis,  and  in  1920 
a  series  of  leaflets.  The  Virginia  Bureau  of  Vocations  for 
Women  is  doing  a  piece  of  pioneer  work  for  the  south.  All 
the  bureaus  have  established  intimate,  although  more  or  less 
informal,  relations  with  colleges  and  professional  schools 
in  their  territory,  and  all  of  them,  to  the  limit  of  their  re- 
sources, have  made  local  studies  of  occupations  for  women. 
For  several  years  they  maintained  a  bulletin  giving  the  cur- 
rent news  from  each  bureau,  and  this  publication  was  re- 
vived by  the  National  Committee,  and  issued  during  1919- 


I 


SECURING  OF  EMPLOYMENT  403 

1920  by  the  Bureau  of  Vocational  Information  under  the 
editorship  of  Miss  Emma  P.  Hirth,  its  director. 

These  local  studies  have  been  reinforced  and  supple- 
mented by  the  more  comprehensive  vocational  studies  of 
the  Association  of  Collegiate  Alumna;,  the  only  national 
organization  of  college  women.  This  organization  has  co- 
operated actively  with  the  bureaus  both  as  a  whole  and 
through  its  local  branches.  In  fact,  some  of  the  western 
bureaus  were  founded  through  the  activity  of  branches  of 
the  Association,  and  maintain  an  active  connection  with 
them.  In  1910,  contemporaneously  with  the  founding  of 
the  Appointment  Bureau  in  Boston,  the  Association  created 
a  standing  committee  on  vocational  opportunities  other  than 
teaching,  which  has  been  successively  under  the  chairman- 
ship of  Dr.  Elizabeth  Kemper  Adams,  Dr.  Gertrude  S. 
Martin,  Miss  Florence  Jackson,  and  Mrs.  May  S.  Cheney. 
This  committee  has  been  responsible  for  the  publication  of 
a  study  of  three  hundred  college  women  in  non-teaching 
occupations,  appearing  in  1913;^  a  bulletin  entitled  Voca- 
tional Training:  A  Classified  List  of  Institutions  Training 
Educated  Women  for  Occupations  Other  than  Teaching, 
also  appearing  in  1913;'  a  Census  of  College  IJ^omen  made 
in  1915  under  the  direction  of  Miss  Mary  Van  Kleeck  and 
reported  in  1918;^  and  two  related  studies  of  vocational 
guidance  in  the  colleges  made  under  the  direction  of  Miss 
Florence  Jackson  and  reported  in  1917  and  1919.^  It  has 
also  organized  local  committees  in  the  branches  and  kept 
them  in  touch  through  a  monthly  circular  letter ;  and  it  has 
twice  called  appointment  bureau  conferences,  two  of  a 
pioneer  character  in  the  spring  and  fall  of  191 1  and  two 
sectional  conferences  in  the  fall  of  1919,  one  in  New  York 
in  cooperation  with  the  Bureau  of  Vocational  Information 
and  one  in  Chicago  in  connection  with  a  meeting  of  the 
National  Committee  of  Bureaus  of  Occupations,  to  discuss 
the  larger  relations  among  the  colleges,  the  professions,  and 
professional  employment  bureaus  arising  out  of  the  war. 

The  earlier  relations  between  the  various  bureaus  of  oc- 

*  See  Journal  of  Association  of  Collegiate    Alumna,  Vols.  6,   10, 
II,  12,  and  passim  for  vocational  articles  and  information. 
'Association  of  Collegiate  Ahimncc  Bulletin  Number  i. 


404        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

cupations  and  the  colleges,  especially  through  their  appoint- 
ment bureaus,  are  discussed  more  fully  in  the  next  chapter. 
Here  it  is  enough  to  say  that  while  these  relations  were 
friendly  and  in  some  cases  cordial,  they  rested  upon  no 
clearly  recognized  basis  nor  policy.  The  bureaus  of  occu- 
pations were  not  due  to  the  colleges  as  institutions  but  to  the 
initiative  of  college  women  themselves,  or,  in  the  case  of 
the  Boston  Bureau,  to  the  initiative  of  a  far-seeing  student 
of  the  times  like  Mrs.  Mary  Morton  Kehew.  It  has,  in 
fact,  taken  the  war  to  arouse  most  of  the  colleges  to  any- 
thing more  than  a  languid  interest  in  their  own  appointment 
bureaus ;  and  in  geaeral  they  failed  to  grasp  the  educational 
significance  of  the  bureau  of  occupations  movement.  The 
bureaus  were  outside  organizations  not  under  their  control ; 
and  there  was  furthermore  a  practical  difficulty  in  the  fact 
that  most  of  them  charged  fees,  or  at  least  commissions,  for 
their  services,  and  so  appeared  sometimes  in  the  light  of 
ordinary  profit-making  employment  agencies.  This  allega- 
tion has  amused,  when  it  has  not  distressed,  the  boards  and 
managers  who  know  how  far  from  meeting  the  expense 
of  their  educational  and  investigational  services  such  fees 
and  commissions  have  been.  But  in  the  present  period  of 
reorganization  and  working  out  of  new  methods  of  pro- 
fessional cooperation  this  whole  matter  of  charges  for 
services  needs  to  be  considered  far  more  carefully  than  has 
yet  been  done. 

The  Intercollegiate  Intelligence  Bureau  in  Washington 
already  described  did  not  establish  a  service  for  women  until 
shortly  before  it  went  out  of  existence  early  in  1918.  Its 
system  of  "adjutants"  in  cooperating  institutions  had  been 
organized  wholly  to  the  end  of  procuring  men  for  govern- 
ment service ;  and  deans  of  women  or  vocational  secretaries 
for  women  were  naturally  not  included.  Its  service  for  men 
was  incorporated  into  the  War  Service  Exchange  of  the 
Adjutant  General's  Office  of  the  War  Department  and  its 
new  service  for  women  under  the  management  of  Miss  Julia 
Newton  Brooks  became  in  April,  1918,  the  Women's  Col- 
legiate Section  of  the  recently  created  War  Emergency 
United  States  Employment  Service.  In  July,  1918,  Dr. 
Elizabeth  Kemper  Adams,  who  had  been  sent  to  Washing- 


SECURING  OF  EMPLOYMENT  405 

ton  as  the  representative  of  the  National  Committee  of 
Bureaus  of  Occupations,  was  appointed  chief  of  the  Section. 

Between  May  and  November,  1918,  eight  of  the  twelve 
bureaus  of  occupations — those  in  Qeveland,  Detroit.  Denver, 
Kansas  City,  Minneapolis,  New  York,  Philadelphia,  and 
Pittsburgh — took  the  patriotic  and  courageous  step  of  enter- 
ing the  Employment  Service  as  professional  sections  in  the 
several  states,  but  with  the  expectation  of  cooperating  in  a 
clearance  and  information  service  through  the  Washington 
Professional  Office.  The  bureaus  in  Boston,  Chicago,  and 
Los  Angeles  cooperated  informally,  and  waived  fees  and 
commissions  for  positions  secured  through  the  Employ- 
ment Service,  while  the  Virginia  bureau  cooperated  in  mat- 
ters of  information.  Shortly  before  the  armistice  plans 
were  matured  for  the  amalgamation  of  the  Women's  Pro- 
fessional Section  and  the  Public  Service  Reserve  for 
professional  men,  which  had  been  operating  independently 
under  the  Employment  Service,  into  a  single  Professional 
Section  for  men  and  women.  The  General  Order  estab- 
lishing the  section  formally  was  not  issued  until  January  2, 
1919.  In  the  meantime  the  signing  of  the  armistice  on 
November  11  produced  an  immediate  reversal  of  the  entire 
employment  situation.  From  dealing  with  an  acute  labor 
shortage  the  Employment  Service  had  to  turn  almost  over 
night  to  dealing  with  an  acute  labor  surplus.  The  critical 
professional  problem  became  the  redistribution  and  reem- 
ployment in  civil  life  of  the  large  numbers  of  young  pro- 
fessional men  in  military  or  other  government  service ;  and 
in  this  emergency  the  smaller  but  no  less  real  problem  of 
the  reemployment  of  professional  women  who  had  been  in 
war  services  was  almost  lost  sight  of.  Under  these  cir- 
cumstances the  attempts  to  establish  single  professional 
offices  in  the  field  for  men  and  women  workers  were  at- 
tended by  innumerable  difficulties;  and  the  failure  of  Con- 
gress to  provide  appropriations  for  continuing  the  Employ- 
ment Service  led  to  its  drastic  curtailment  in  March,  1919, 
and  to  the  abolition  of  the  Professional  Section  on  April  15. 

The  experience  of  the  bureaus  of  occupations  under  the 
government  was  too  brief  and  too  chaotic  to  produce  any 
satisfactory  results  of  a  concrete  nature.     But  in  a  large 


4o6        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

way  it  marks  the  end  of  the  first  period  in  their  history  and 
the  beginning  of  a  new  period.  They  cannot  go  back  to 
their  old  local  and  independent  handling  of  the  employment 
problems  of  professional  women.  The  colleges  and  the  pro- 
fessions themselves  have  had  a  similar  experience,  and  from 
their  temporary  war-time  affiliations  all  three  have  brought 
at  least  a  vision  of  a  new  system  of  professional  relations 
and  some  sort  of  cooperative  nation-wide  professional  em- 
ployment service  for  men  and  women  workers. 

To  some  of  us  the  only  ultimately  democratic  and  ade- 
quate form  will  be  a  service  under  public  control  as  an 
integral  part  of  a  great  federal-state  employment  system 
with  provision  for  every  group  from  "day  workers"  to  pro- 
fessional workers.^  Such  an  inclusion  would  be  of  mutual 
advantage.  It  would  help  to  give  professional  persons  a 
needed  sense  of  themselves  as  workers  among  other  work- 
ers ;  and  on  the  other  hand  it  would  help  to  emphasize  the 
fact  that  a  modern  employment  service  is  not  merely  for 
those  who  are  out  of  work,  an  "unemployment  service," 
but  also  a  great  piece  of  public  machinery  for  the  transfer 
and  promotion  of  all  kinds  of  workers  and  for  the  collecting 
and  distributing  of  information  about  every  aspect  of  the 
labor  market,  a  great  instrument  in  the  development  of  satis- 
factory working  relations,  industrial,  commercial,  and  pro- 
fessional. But  we  may  perhaps  be  selfishly  relieved  that 
the  establishm.ent  of  a  satisfactory  public  employment 
service  is  likely  to  be  delayed  until  we  have  had  time  to 
study  professional  problems  more  fully  and  to  work  out 
experimentally  an  employment  system  of  our  own  which 
may  later  be  advantageously  incorporated  into  a  public 
system. 

Certain  points  regarding  a  professional  service  have 
emerged  with  tolerable  clearness,  (i)  An  adequate  pro- 
fessional employment  service  must  be  nation-wide  in  scope 
with  provisions  for  clearing  information,  opportunities,  and 
workers.  (2)  On  the  other  hand  the  more  specialized  are 
the  requirements  of  employers  and  workers,  the  less  satis- 
factorily can  they  be  dealt  with  through  a  central  office  and 

*  The  Russell  Sage  Foundation  is  about  to  issue  a  study  of  the 
operation  and  development  of  public  employment  offices. 


SECURING  OF  EMPLOYMENT  407 

through  correspondence  alone.  There  must  be  regional 
offices  with  provisions  for  skillful  personal  interviewing  and 
rating,  and  a  central  clearance  office  or  possibly  a  small 
group  of  clearance  offices,  one  for  the  east,  one  for  the 
south,  one  for  the  central  west  and  one  for  the  far  west. 
Regional  offices  might  correspond  to  the  district  offices  of 
the  Federal  Reserve  Board,  the  Federal  Board  for 
Vocational  Education,  or  the  divisional  headquarters  of 
the  American  Red  Cross.  The  important  matter  is 
to  have  them  in  centers  of  population  and  professional 
activity.  The  existing  bureaus  of  occupations  are  well- 
distributed  except  for  the  south  and  the  far  west.  (3) 
Both  the  central  and  the  regional  offices  must  be  admin- 
istered by  persons  trained  in  modern  employment  and  per- 
sonnel methods,  including  interviewing,  rating,  placing,  and 
the  collection  and  distribution  of  information,  and  must 
include  experts  who  have  the  confidence  of  the  several  pro- 
fessions. (4)  There  must  be  definite  provisions  for  train- 
ing the  office  and  field  force  through  supervision,  staff  meet- 
ings, conferences,  institutes,  field  work,  and  courses  given 
both  within  the  system  and  in  cooperation  with  outside 
institutions.  (5)  There  must  be  definite  and  continuous 
relations  with  educational  institutions,  professional  asso- 
ciations, and  successful  professional  practitioners.  (6) 
There  must  be  equally  close  relations  with  professional 
employers  and  especially  with  organized  personnel  depart- 
ments. (7)  There  must  be  both  a  central  information  and 
publicity  service  and  regional  services  for  the  purpose  of 
collecting  and  distributing  information  to  the  service  and 
the  public.  (8)  There  must  be  also  a  central  department 
of  planning  and  research  which  shall  constantly  study  the 
operations  of  the  service  with  the  help  of  regional  offices 
and  of  special  investigators,  prepare  forms  of  various  kinds 
including  professional  "job  analyses"  and  personnel  speci- 
fications, devise  tests  of  professional  abilities  and  standards 
of  interviewing,  make  statistical  and  other  studies  regard- 
ing professional  distributions,  opportunities,  working  and 
living  conditions,  earnings,  promotions,  training  in  service, 
and  so  on.  (9)  There  must  be  some  system  which  shall 
combine  common  standards  and  adequate  supervision  with 


4o8       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

the  preservation  of  local  initiative,  responsibility,  and  flex- 
ibility. 

Of  course  it  virill  not  be  possible  to  work  out  so  compre- 
hensive a  system  all  at  once.  For  a  v^hile  the  wisest  policy 
may  be  to  extend  the  plan  of  separate  employment  bureaus 
for  each  profession  and  to  form  a  league  of  these  bureaus 
with  provision  for  frequent  conference  and  some  sort  of 
common  bureau  of  clearance  and  information.  But  even 
in  a  loose  system,  the  colleges  and  professional  schools  may 
well  be  recognized  as  primarily  personnel  agencies  for  the 
procurement  of  professional  workers ;  the  professional  as- 
sociations as  primarily  agencies  for  research,  information, 
and  counsel  within  their  respective  fields ;  and  the  employ- 
ment bureaus  proper  as  primarily  exchanges  for  informa- 
tion and  placement.  As  regards  methods  of  supporting  a  co- 
operative professional  employment  service,  it  seems  advis- 
able to  avoid  all  suggestion  of  the  fee-charging  agency  and 
to  provide  some  system  of  group  membership  on  the  part 
of  institutions,  professional  associations,  and  large  em- 
ployers, and  different  types  of  individual  membership. 
This  method  is  proving  satisfactory  in  the  National  Social 
Workers'  Exchange  and  elsewhere.  A  well  conceived  pro- 
gram might  receive  at  least  temporary  aid  from  some  of 
the  large  foundations  as  a  valuable  social  experiment. 

The  National  Committee  of  Bureaus  of  Occupations 
again  took  the  lead  in  professional  employment  matters  by 
calling  a  conference  in  New  York  in  January,  1920,  to 
consider  the  subject  of  a  nation-wide  professional  em- 
ployment service,  which  was  attended  by  men  and  wo- 
men representing  professional  associations  and  employment 
services,  college,  university,  and  professional  school  facul- 
ties and  appointment  bureaus,  government  departments, 
civic  and  social  and  educational  organizations.  The  con- 
ference passed  resolutions  favoring  the  establishment  of 
such  a  service  with  provision  for  information,  research,  and 
training  of  employment  workers,  and  appointed  a  commit- 
tee to  prepare  a  plan  of  action  and  to  call  later  a  second 
and  larger  conference.^     The  new  Federation  of  Business 

*  See  Bulletin  of  the  National  Committee  of  Bureaus  of  Occupa- 
tions.    February,  1920. 


SECURING  OF  EMPLOYMENT  409 

and  Professional  Women's  Clubs  and  the  National  Board 
of  Young  Women's  Christian  Associations  are  likewise 
deeply  interested  in  professional  employment  problems. 
The  Central  Branch  of  the  Y.  W.  C.  A.  in  New  York  has 
established  an  Employment  Department,  under  the  direc- 
tion of  Miss  Eugenia  Wallace,  which  is  dealing  to  a  con- 
siderable extent  with  professional  workers,  and  has  been 
elected  to  membership  in  the  National  Committee  of  Bu- 
reaus of  Occupations.  It  has  made  several  intensive  studies 
of  opportunities  for  educated  women  in  and  about  New 
York. 

The  securing  of  professional  employment  through  exist- 
ing or  projected  agencies  by  no  means  wholly  supersedes 
the  older  individual  methods  of  direct  application  by  letter 
or  in  person ;  recommendation  by  teachers,  former  em- 
ployers, and  friends;  advertisement  in  suitable  publications. 
Women  filling  our  schedules  recommend  all  of  these 
methods,  especially  in  the  fieFds  of  journalism  and  the  social 
services.  Employment  offices  do  not  do  away  with  the 
need  for  initiative  and  independence  on  the  part  of  appli- 
cants; they  often  suggest  one  or  other  of  these  steps.  Per- 
haps as  efficient  personnel  departments  become  more  gen- 
erally established  in  the  professions  and  business,  employ- 
ment offices  will  fill  fewer  and  fewer  direct  orders,  and  will 
merely  advise  suitable  workers  to  make  their  own  applica- 
tions to  these  departments.  To  some  extent  this  is  hap- 
pening already.  But  a  professional  employment  service 
does  away  with  blind  and  wasteful  individual  efforts  to 
secure  employment,  with  letters  sent  broadcast  and  weary 
rounds  of  visits  to  the  offices  of  social  agencies,  newspapers 
and  magazines,  and  business  firms.  It  prevents  the  sort  of 
professional  helplessness  and  waiting  on  chance  that  is  an 
equivalent  of  the  discredited  industrial  "waiting  at  the  fac- 
tory gate."  And  it  should  be  as  valuable  a  saving  of  time 
and  energy  to  employers  as  to  workers.  It  should  also 
be  a  powerful  influence  in  diminishing  the  casual  and  irre- 
sponsible attitude  of  women  toward  employment  which  is  so 
often  said  to  bar  them  from  achieving  full  professional 
status  and  in  fostering  a  just  understanding  of  their  quali- 
fications and  obligations  as  professional  workers. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

THE  COLLEGES  AND  WOMEN   PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

As  a  result  of  the  war  the  colleges  of  liberal  arts  find 
themselves  in  a  new  position  with  repect  to  professional 
training  and  the  professional  interests  of  their  students 
and  graduates.  They  are  beginning  to  study  the  whole 
matter  as  an  educational  problem  of  importance.  This  is 
especially  true  of  the  colleges  independent  of  graduate  and 
professional  schools.  But  the  war  services  of  college  men 
and  women  and  their  own  earnest  efforts  to  cooperate  with 
the  government  and  to  provide  intensive  training  have 
forced  higher  institutions  of  all  types  to  confront  the  ques- 
tions :  What  are  the  most  satisfactory  relations  between 
liberal  and  professional  education  and  between  both  kinds 
of  education  and  the  professions  themselves?  How  may 
they  cooperate  without  wasteful  separations  on  the  one 
hand  and  wasteful  encroachments  on  the  other?  This  chap- 
ter undertakes  to  review  the  present  situation  and  the  steps 
leading  to  it  with  special  reference  to  the  institutions  edu- 
cating women.  In  its  larger  aspects  the  problem  is  the  same 
for  institutions  educating  men. 

The  detachment  of  the  liberal  arts  college  from  profes- 
sional concerns  has  for  a  good  many  years  been  more  theo- 
retical than  actual.     It  has  been  yielding  gradually  and  for 
the  most  part  unconsciously  to  prevalent  ideas  of  the  social 
and  civic  as  well  as  the  economic  responsibility  of  the  lib- 
erally educated.     This  change  reveals  itself  clearly  in  the 
education  of  women  because  of  their  recent  emergence  as 
wage-earners  and  citizens ;  and  is  of  course  as  yet  far  from  i 
complete.     Before  the  war  there  were  various  partial  and; 
tentative  adjustments  of  the  respective  claims  of  liberal  and' 
professional  education,  some  of  them  frank  practical  com- 
promises and  concessions  and  none  of  them  fully  worked 

410 


COLLEGES  AND  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS    411 

out  on  a  modern  basis.  But  certain  movements  and  de- 
velopments particularly  in  the  decade  preceding  191 7  very 
definitely  prepared  the  way. 

Many  universities  and  special  institutions  of  various  types 
have  attempted  to  combine  liberal  and  professional  educa- 
tion. Some  have  counted  the  senior  year  both  in  the  college 
and  in  the  professional  school.  Others  have  established 
undergraduate  schools  or  courses  with  professional  training 
in  the  last  two  years, — for  example,  in  journalism  and  in 
commerce, — or  arranged  special  five-year  courses, — for  ex- 
ample in  nursing  and  social  service.  Some  institutions  carry 
on  liberal  and  professional  education  together  during  a  four- 
year  course,  as  in  Simmons  College  and  the  Connecticut 
College  for  Women.  In  others,  professional  education  is 
dominant  and  liberal  subsidiary  during  the  four  years,  as 
in  the  institutes  of  technology  and  the  agricultural  colleges. 
Smith  College  is  continuing  its  war-time  plan  of  a  summer 
professional  school  under  the  auspices  of  a  college  of  lib- 
eral arts ;  and  this  vocational  utilization  of  the  summer 
vacation  is  a  suggestive  experiment. 

The  separate  colleges,  especially  in  the  east,  have  for  the 
most  part  stoutly  refused  to  include  courses  of  an  avowedly 
professional  character  in  the  undergraduate  curriculum, 
and  have  educational  and  psychological  grounds  for  their 
position.  They  have  met  the  rising  tide  of  requests  from 
employers  of  many  sorts  and  the  increasing  interest  of  their 
students  in  their  own  vocational  prospects  by  various  extra- 
curricular provisions  of  an  administrative  character,  usually 
connected  with  the  office  of  president  or  dean,  sometimes 
with  the  office  of  a  resident  alumni  or  alumnae  secretary. 
Faculty  bodies,  as  such,  have  rarely  originated,  supervised, 
or  even  heartily  supported  these  enterprises ;  and  until  re- 
cently have  looked  upon  them  as  almost  wholly  external  to 
the  educational  activities  of  the  college.  They  have  made  ex- 
ceptions in  favor  of  teaching,  the  profession  for  which  the 
college  has  traditionally  prepared ;  and  individual  depart- 
ments and  instructors  have  always  taken  a  lively  interest 
in  the  vocational  plans  and  opportunities  of  their  students, 
present  and  past. 

Before  the  war,  however,  two  educational   movements 


412       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

had  begun  to  direct  faculty  attention  to  vocational  prob- 
lems and  to  the  relations  between  the  college  and  the  pro- 
fessional school.  These  were,  first,  the  reorganization  of 
the  liberal  arts  curriculum  in  accordance  with  the  group 
system  of  majors,  minors,  and  prerequisite  or  "sequential" 
courses;  and,  second,  the  requirement  by  the  better  pro- 
fessional schools  of  certain  amounts  and  kinds  of  under- 
graduate work  as  necessary  for  admission.  To  the  profes- 
sional schools  we  owe  the  term  "pre-professional  courses" 
and  largely  to  these  two  movements  the  formation  of  faculty 
advisory  and  vocational  committees  and  their  study  of  the 
pre-professional  aspects  of  the  liberal  arts  curriculum. 

The  earliest,  most  widely  adopted,  and  most  persistent 
form  of  administrative  machinery  for  dealing  with  voca- 
tional matters  in  the  college  has  been  the  appointment  bu- 
reau. But  there  have  been  various  other  vocational  de- 
velopments, some  in  connection  with  the  appointment  bureau, 
some  rather  curiously  detached  from  it,  such  as  vocational 
conferences,  vocational  counselors,  vocational  committees 
of  faculty  and  of  students,  vocational  bulletins.  The  two 
kinds  of  undertaking  have  represented  broadly  the 
placement  and  the  informational  or  publicity  aspects  of 
college  vocational  efforts.  Both,  moreover,  have  passed 
through  several  stages  or  periods  which  may  be  outlined 
here  for  the  sake  of  showing  the  elements  that  go  to  make 
up  the  present  situation ;  and  both  are  likely  to  find  their 
proper  connection  through  becoming  parts  of  a  larger  sys- 
tem of  professional  relations.  In  reality  these  periods  have 
not  been  so  sharply  separated  as  here  represented,  and 
developments  have  varied  greatly  in  different  institutions 
and  in  different  parts  of  the  country.  Dates  are  of  neces- 
sity only  approximate. 

I.    APPOINTMENT    BUREAUS  II.    OTHER     VOCATIONAL     DE- 

VELOPMENTS 

I.  The  appointment  bureau        i.  The    vocational    confer- 
as      teachers'       bureau.  ence   period    191 1 — . 
1895-1910.     Cooperation 
with  schools  and  teach- 
ers' agencies. 


i 


COLLEGES  AND  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS    413 


2.  The  appointment  bureau 
as  bureau  of  occupa- 
tions. 1910-1917.  Co- 
operation with  other  em- 
ployers and  with  city 
bureaus  of  occupations. 

3.  The  appointment  bureau 
as  war-service  bureau. 
1917-1919.  Cooperation 
with  government  and 
national  war-service 
agencies,  including  the 
War  Emergency  U.  S. 
Employment  Service. 


2.  The  vocational  counselor 
period   1913 — . 


The  war-service  registra- 
tion and  intensive  train- 
ing period.  1917-1918. 
War-service  committees 
of  faculty,  students,  and 
alumna;.  Cooperation 
with  American  Council 
on  Education,  National 
Research  Council,  etc. 


4.  The  appointment  bureau 
as  professional  person- 
nel bureau.  1919 — .  Co- 
operation with  organized 
personnel  departments, 
bureaus  of  occupations, 
and  other  professional 
employment  bureaus. 

5.  The  appointment  bu- 
reau as  local  informa- 
tion, publicity,  and  per- 
sonnel bureau  in  a  pro- 
fessional employment 
service  taking  over 
placement.     1921 — ? 


4.  The  faculty  vocational 
guidance  committee  and 
pre-professional  pam- 
phlet period  1918- 
1921 — . 


5.  The  professional  rela- 
tions period.  1921 — 
Intercollegiate  and  inter- 
professional conferences. 
Working  out  of  system 
of  professional  employ- 
ment service. 
Educational  determina- 
tion of  the  function  of 
the  college  with  respect 
to  professional  training; 
and  professional  employ- 
ment. 


414       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  the  last  entries  under 
both  headings  represent  tendencies  and  possibilities  rather 
than  actual  accomplishments.  But  the  colleges  have  ar- 
rived at  a  stage  where  they  are  willing  to  join  with  others 
in  studying  the  whole  matter  of  professional  relations  and 
to  consider  as  a  problem  worthy  of  educational  inquiry  the 
proper  role  of  the  college  and  the  college  appointment  bu- 
reau in  the  preparation  and  distribution  of  women  pro- 
fessional workers.  Thus  conceived,  the  study  of  the  prob- 
lem from  the  college  side  falls  under  faculty  jurisdiction, 
and  for  its  adequate  solution  involves  cooperation  with 
professional  schools,  professional  associations,  professional 
workers  and  employers,  and  experts  in  employment  and 
personnel  systems. 

When  the  United  States  entered  the  world  war  in  1917, 
the  colleges,  universities,  and  professional  schools  placed 
themselves  promptly  at  the  disposal  of  the  government. 
Registrations  of  graduates  were  made  to  furnish  the  names 
and  equipment  of  those  available  for  services ;  special  war- 
service  committees  of  faculty,  students,  and  graduates  were 
formed ;  college  conferences  were  held  in  Washington  and 
elsewhere.  Later,  various  war-service  training  courses 
were  offered,  some  of  them  planned  or  directed  by  the 
government,  such  as  the  Food  Administration  courses  and 
the  employment  management  courses  of  the  War  Industries 
Board ;  others  to  meet  developing  war  needs,  such  as  the 
courses  for  nurses,  for  health  officers,  for  psychiatric  social 
workers,  for  reconstruction  aids,  for  land-army  super- 
visors, to  mention  those  given  for  women.  Late  in  1918 
the  institutions  for  men  were  practically  taken  over  by  the 
government  to  train  units  of  the  Students'  Army  Training 
Corps.^  Institutions  for  both  men  and  women  carried  on 
special  war-service  investigation  and  research.  Certain 
war-emergency  services  of  the  government,  such  as  the 
Food  Administration,  established  special  departments  for 
cooperation  with  the  colleges.  Many  others  were  staffed 
by  college  professors  in  constant  touch  with  their  own  and 
other  institutions.     Great  professional  associations  like  the 

*  See  Parke  R.  Kolbe.  The  Colleges  in  War  Time  and  After 
(1919). 


COLLEGES  AND  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS    415 

American  Medical  Association,  the  American  Bar  Associa- 
tion, the  American  Chemical  Society,  and  the  various  engi- 
neering societies,  which  maintained  war-service  offices  or 
representatives  in  Washington,  developed  a  more  active  in- 
terest in  professional  education  and  professional  schools  in 
view  of  threatened  shortages  of  workers  in  their  several 
fields.  Other  professional  associations,  such  as  the  Na- 
tional Committee  for  Mental  Hygiene  and  the  public  health 
and  nursing  associations,  sponsored  intensive  training 
courses  given  by  the  colleges.  The  efforts  to  establish  a 
country  wide  professional  employment  service  with  the  col- 
leges as  recruiting  offices  for  workers,  begun  by  the  Inter- 
collegiate Intelligence  Bureau  and  continued  by  the  Pro- 
fessional Section  of  the  War-Emergency  United  States 
Employment  Service,  have  already  been  described. 

Another  Washington  agency  through  which  the  colleges 
and  college  organizations  cooperated  with  the  government 
in  its  war  activities  was  the  American  Council  on  Educa- 
tion, established  early  in  1918  and  continuing  since  the  war 
as  a  non-governmental  information  and  investigation  service 
and  clearing-house  for  higher  educational  institutions.  In 
August,  1918,  the  Council  created  a  Committee  on  War- 
Service  Training  for  Women  College  Students,  which  has 
been  continued  as  a  standing  Committee  on  the  Training  of 
Women  for  Professional  Service,  and  gives  the  educational 
and  professional  interests  of  women  explicit  recognition  in 
the  permanent  organization  and  policies  of  the  Council.  The 
Association  of  Collegiate  Alumnae  is  a  full  cooperating 
member.  Higher  institutions  for  both  men  and  women 
are  likewise  represented  in  the  new  Institute  of  International 
Education,  originating  as  a  war-time  measure  under  the 
auspices  of  the  American  Council  on  Education  and  now 
carried  on  with  the  aid  of  the  Carnegie  Endowment  for 
International  Peace  to  further  understanding  and  active 
cooperation  among  American  and  foreign  educational  in- 
stitutions, especially  through  the  exchange  of  professors  and 
students  and  the  provision  of  foreign  fellowships.  The 
National  Research  Council,  established  by  the  Council  of 
National  Defense  to  coordinate  scientific  research  for  war 
purposes  and  intimately  associated  with  the  colleges  and 


4i6       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

universities,  is  continuing  and  expanding  its  activities  in 
the  interests  of  peace,  and  with  the  help  of  the  Rockefeller 
Foundation  is  offering  fellowships  for  advanced  research. 

In  spite  of  the  imperfect,  overlapping,  and  temporary 
character  of  some  of  these  war-time  undertakings,  there  is 
no  doubt  that  they  have  had  a  tremendous  effect  upon  the 
educational  institutions  concerned.  The  colleges  have  taken 
stock,  as  never  before,  of  the  occupational  achievements  and 
distribution  of  their  graduates,  not  as  a  mere  matter  of 
statistics  but  in  order  to  contribute  their  quotas  to  the 
trained  man-power  and  woman-power  required  in  a  great 
national  and  international  enterprise.  They  have  found 
a  new  meaning  in  the  old  formal  truth  that  the  real  test 
of  an  educational  institution  lies  in  the  kind  of  educated 
persons  that  it  sends  out  and  their  contribution  to  the  life 
and  work  of  their  day.  As  a  result,  it  may  not  be  long 
before  they  will  come  to  consider  committees  on  the  careers 
of  their  graduates  quite  as  important  as  committees  on 
admission,  and  will  study  successful  and  unsuccessful 
careers  with  equal  care.  It  has  sometimes  been  whispered 
that  the  college  "scrap-heap"  is  unduly  large.  The  alumnae 
association  of  a  large  college  for  women,  issuing  a  bio- 
graphical register  of  graduates,  has  been  considering  the 
advisability  of  including  an  "occupational  index"  giving  the 
names  and  addresses  of  women  in  the  several  fields  of 
work.  For  the  first  time  the  colleges  have  thought  of 
themselves  as  component  parts  of  a  single  great  national 
service  supplying  the  expert  leadership  in  production,  re- 
search, administration,  public  affairs  of  all  sorts,  which  is 
even  more  requisite  for  an  enduring  and  progressive  peace 
than  it  is  for  war.  They  have  learned  at  least  the  first 
lessons  of  acting  with  one  another,  with  the  government, 
with  national  and  international  agencies  for  education  and 
research,  with  the  various  professional  organizations,  with 
all  the  constructive  forces  of  the  community.  They  have 
begun  to  grasp  the  fact  that  education  is  not  a  process 
moving  only  in  one  direction  and  ceasmg  on  the  day  of 
graduation  but  a  continuous  social  activity  returning  upon 
and  reconstituting  itself. 

The  government,  the  world  of  industrial  and  commercial 


COLLEGES  AND  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS    417 

affairs,  and  the  professions  themselves  have  also  learned 
many  lessons  from  their  cooperation  with  one  another  and 
with  the  colleges  and  professional  schools.  They  have 
gained  a  new  respect  for  higher  education  as  an  "essential 
industry,"  and  have  seen  clearly  for  the  first  time  the 
absolute  dependence  of  all  large-scale  modem  enterprise 
upon  the  professional  expert  and  the  absolute  dependence 
of  the  professional  expert  upon  the  right  sort  of  facilities 
for  education  and  research.  They  have  seen,  too,  even 
more  clearly  than  the  colleges  themselves,  that  in  order  to 
provide  these  facilities  there  must  be  the  closest  reciprocal 
relations  among  the  three  groups  most  intimately  concerned 
with  the  supply  of  professional  workers :  those  directing  im- 
portant enterprises  of  any  kind ;  those  directing  the  educa- 
tional preparation  of  professional  workers;  those  directing 
professional  associations.  Research  laboratories  and  re- 
search bureaus  in  industry  and  commerce  work  with  uni- 
versity laboratories  and  departments  or  depute  to  them  cer- 
tain investigations.  Employers  of  professional  workers  of 
every  type  are  drafting  "personnel  specifications"  and  sub- 
mitting them  to  colleges  and  professional  schools,  to  show 
the  kind  of  workers  they  require.  College  professors  are 
lent  to  the  government,  to  social  and  business  organizations 
for  special  investigations.  It  has  been  suggested  that  gov- 
ernment departments  establish  research  fellowships.  Pro- 
fessional organizations  are  recognizing  that  the  days  of 
exclusiveness  and  mutual  suspicion  are  over ;  that  practically 
all  large  undertakings  require  the  closest  professional  "team- 
work"; that  every,  profession  has  active  and  continuing  ob- 
ligations to  other  professions,  to  the  public,  and  to  the  whole 
matter  of  professional  education.  In  fact,  education  is  com- 
ing to  be  recognized  as  the  pivotal  professional  problem, 
education  in  terms  of  students  and  workers  rather  than  in 
terms  merely  of  professional  subject-matter  and  professional 
standards,  important  as  these  must  always  remain.  Mod- 
ern organizations  of  all  sorts  are  establishing  not  only 
research  bureaus  but  personnel  departments  and  educational 
departments  with  provision  for  the  training  of  workers  in 
service ;  and  they  are  calling  upon  th-e  colleges  for  directors 
of  such  departments,  and  are  reporting  back  to  the  colleges 


4i8       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

their  findings  with  regard  to  young  college  and  professional 
school  graduates.  Such  active  educational  relations  cannot 
fail  to  emphasize  the  continuous  nature  of  professional 
education;  that  the  professions  are  dependent  upon  the  col- 
leges and  professional  schools  and  that  these  are  equally 
dependent  upon  the  professions.  Professional  organiza- 
tions are  learning  that  their  educational  obligations  are 
fundamental  and  not  incidental.  The  Inter-professional 
Conference  held  in  Detroit  late  in  1919  has  already  been  de- 
scribed.     (See  pp.  6-7.) 

The  problem  of  the  relations  of  the  professions  in  their 
organized  form  to  educational  institutions  has  two  aspects : 
(i)  relations  of  the  several  professions  to  their  own  pro- 
fessional schools;  (2)  relations  of  the  various  professions 
and  professional  schools  to  the  colleges  of  liberal  arts. 
The  first  is  a  matter  of  professional  education  proper;  the 
second  is  a  matter  of  what  we  are  coming  to  call  pre-pro- 
fessional  education.  While  the  two  are  undeniably  related, 
the  first  part  of  the  problem  is  easier  to  solve  and  is  nearer 
solution  than  the  second  part.  There  are  increasingly  inti- 
mate relations  between  the  employers  of  professional  work- 
ers and  the  schools  training  these  workers ;  and  experts  in 
every  professional  field  are  estimating  with  increasing  care 
and  sense  of  responsibility  the  yearly  output  of  young  grad- 
uates into  that  field.  There  are  visiting  and  advisory  com- 
mittees of  employers  and  experts;  there  are  arrangements 
for  obsen^ation  and  practice ;  there  are  prospects  of  a  year 
of  interneship  becoming  the  custom  in  several  fields  besides 
that  of  medicine. 

In  the  colleges  of  liberal  arts  satisfactory  contacts  with 
professional  associations,  professional  schools,  and  indi- 
vidual professional  experts  are  much  more  difficult  to  pro- 
vide. The  colleges  have  abundant  justification  for  holding 
fast  to  the  idea  of  liberal  education,  although  even  yet 
most  of  them  have  not  reformulated  it  frankly  in  modern 
terms ;  and  they  naturally  do  not  wish  to  become  merely 
the  stamping  ground  of  rival  professions.  They  may  as 
well  admit,  however,  that  just  that  thing  has  been  going  on 
in  some  cases  under  their  very  noses,  and  will  continue  to 
go  on  until  they  bring  the  whole  matter  of  their  relations 


COLLEGES  AND  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS    419 

to  the  professions  out  into  the  open,  and  make  it  the  subject 
of  serious  educational  consideration.  Professor  Frederick 
J.  E.  Woodbridge  has  been  quoted  as  saying  recently  that 
the  colleges  must  decide  whether  they  are  to  be  conducted 
as  ends  in  themselves  or  as  stages  in  a  process.  The  whole 
trend  of  recent  events  and  of  modern  thinking  renders  the 
first  position  untenable;  but  there  is  still  much  to  be  done 
before  the  colleges  are  prepared  to  maintain  the  second 
satisfactorily. 

Nevertheless,  their  various  vocational  developments  prior 
to  the  war  and  during  the  war  have  made  substantial  con- 
tributions to  the  solution  of  their  part  of  the  professional 
relations  problem.  The  college  appointment  bureau  has  been 
described  as  passing  through  the  stages  of  teachers'  bureau, 
occupations  bureau,  and  war-service  bureau.  To-day  it 
shows  signs  of  becoming  a  professional  personnel  and  in- 
formation bureau  with  an  increasing  emphasis  upon  the 
distribution  of  information  and  a  diminishing  emphasis  upon 
actual  placement.  It  is  continuing  to  a  considerable  extent 
its  war-time  connections  with  outside  personnel,  employ- 
ment, and  information  services,  and  is  supplying  to  them 
on  the  one  hand  information  regarding  the  graduates  and 
students  of  the  college  and  to  the  college  community  on 
the  other  hand  information  regarding  professional  fields, 
requirements,  and  opportunities.  In  the  organization  of 
any  nation-wide  system  of  professional  employment  ser- 
vice, the  college  appointment  bureau  would  become  an  in- 
dispensable local  agency  for  the  collection  of  that  full  per- 
sonal information  about  its  graduates  which  the  college 
alone  can  supply,  for  the  preliminary  recruiting  of  young 
workers,  and  for  the  dissemination  among  students  through 
every  channel  at  its  command  of  authentic  and  current  pro- 
fessional information,  supplied  through  the  information 
division  of  the  service  as  a  whole.  It  would,  however,  be 
largely  relieved  of  its  present  function  of  placement,  which 
is,  and  must  be  from  the  nature  of  the  college  as  an  educa- 
tional institution,  its  weakest  point,  since  it  is  without 
facilities  for  field  studies  of  opportunities,  or  for  following 
up  placements,  and  can  properly  deal  only  with  the  employ- 
ers who  request  its  services  unsolicited.     These  and  other 


420       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

employers,  moreover,  will  greatly  prefer  to  deal  with  a  re- 
gional or  central  employment  office  where  they  may  consider 
information  from  the  various  colleges  collectively  instead  of 
dealing  with  each  college  independently.  Colleges  in  Cleve- 
land and  Pittsburgh  already  do  the  bulk  of  their  placement 
work  for  women  through  the  bureaus  of  occupations  in 
those  cities. 

Relieved  of  the  placement  responsibilities  which  have  been 
forced  upon  it  in  default  of  a  better  system,  and  which  it  has 
never  been  able  to  meet  adequately,  the  college  appointment 
bureau  has  a  chance  to  develop  in  other  directions,  to  over- 
come certain  earlier  limitations,  and  to  become  an  execu- 
tive office  correlating  and  carrying  out  professional  policies 
and  procedures  of  the  college,  as  the  board  of  admissions 
carries  out  the  policies  and  procedures  governing  entrance. 

The  two  most  serious  handicaps  of  the  appointment  bu- 
reau in  the  past  have  been  first,  its  lack  of  contact  with 
employers,  professional  workers,  and  full  professional  in- 
formation— in  other  words,  with  the  occupational  world 
outside  of  the  college ;  and,  second,  its  lack  of  contact  with 
faculty  and  students,  in  other  words,  with  the  educational 
world  inside  of  the  college.  The  first  handicap  was  lessened 
to  a  considerable  extent  in  the  decade  before  the  war  through 
the  establishment  of  the  twelve  city  bureaus  of  occupations 
for  trained  women  by  or  with  the  cooperation  of  organiza- 
tions of  college  graduates,  although  the  relations  between 
these  bureaus  and  adjacent  appointment  bureaus  were  more 
or  less  indefinite  and  sometimes  competitive.  The  second 
handicap  was  being  reduced  through  the  increasing  atten- 
tion paid  by  both  college  faculties  and  professional  schools 
to  the  grouping  of  courses  within  the  undergraduate  curricu- 
lum. Such  groupings  inevitably  pointed  forward  to  certain 
professional  fields  and  certain  types  of  professional  training, 
whether  so  intended  or  not.  In  some  institutions  vocational 
committees  of  the  faculty  and  vocational  committees  of  stu- 
dents both  came  into  existence  before  the  war.  In  others,  they 
were  due  to  the  heightened  vocational  demands  of  the  war 
itself.  In  both  groups  the  war  deepened  and  widened  in- 
terest, and  brought  the  appointment  bureau  from  a  minor 
into  a  strategic  position.     In  this  connection  it  may  be  ob- 


COLLEGES  AND  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS   421 

served  that  appointment  bureau  development  has  followed 
somewhat  different  lines  in  the  east  and  in  the  west,  where 
the  position  of  the  state  university  as  the  apex  of  the  state 
educational  system  has  related  it  so  intimately  to  the  schools 
that  many  appointment  bureaus  have  had  their  hands  full 
with  the  recommendation  of  teachers  and  are  still  pre- 
dominantly teachers'  bureaus. 

Even  to-day  colleges  are  establishing  appointment  bu- 
reaus, and  too  often  uncritically  along  the  old  lines.^  But 
certain  new  policies  and  tendencies  may  be  noted :  e.g.,  to 
appoint  advisory  or  supervisory  committees  of  the  faculty, 
advisory  committees  of  alumnae  active  in  the  profession? 
or  expert  in  professional  employment,  cooperating  comir  . 
tees  of  students ;  to  give  the  secretary  or  director  of  tnt 
appointment  bureau  a  seat  on  the  faculty,  with  or  without 
a  vote.  The  policy  of  making  the  director  a  full  voting 
member  of  the  faculty  represents  the  most  thorough-going 
recognition  of  the  educational  function  of  the  appointment 
bureau,  but  is  probably  still  in  advance  of  our  thinking. 
It  calls  for  a  thoroughly  equipped  person  as  director,  a 
specialist  in  educational  and  vocational  psychology  and  in 
the  problems  of  professional  personnel  and  employment, 
with  unusual  ability  as  organizer  and  leader  in  a  new  field. 
Such  a  person  would  develop  an  appointment  bureau,  no 
longer  properly  so  called,  into  a  bureau  of  professional 
relations,  including  a  laboratory  for  professional  test- 
ing and  investigation  and  a  professional  information  and 
consulting  service.  Such  a  bureau  should  be  part  of  the 
general  advisory  system  of  the  college,  preferably  a  sub- 
division of  the  office  of  a  dean  whose  main  functions  are 
those  of  advising  students  educationally  rather  than  for- 
mally. Where  each  department  has  appointed  an  adviser, 
the  dean  might  well  serve  as  chairman  of  an  advisory  com- 
mittee made  up  of  these  representatives  and  the  director  of 
the  appointment  bureau.  Vocational  problems  in  the  col- 
lege need  to  be  dealt  with  in  the  light  of  other  educational 
problems;  departmental  advising  needs  to  be  liberalized  in 

^  A  study  of  their  organization  and  position  in  various  institutions 
was  made  late  in  1918  by  the  Harvard  Appointment  Bureau,  itself 
one  of  the  best. 


422        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

the  same  way.     It  is  too  often  exclusive  and  competitive. 

Oberlin  College  has  placed  at  the  head  of  its  appointment 
bureau  a  professor  of  psychology  who  is  inaugurating  voca- 
tional testing,  and  who  during  the  war  was  in  the  army 
psychological  service.  Teachers  College  of  Columbia  Uni- 
versity has  changed  the  name  of  its  bureau  to  Bureau  of 
Educational  Service,  with  a  psychologist  as  director.  Some 
of  the  newer  bureaus  are  directly  under  faculty  control, 
and  there  is  a  tendency  to  use  the  name  bureau  of  recom- 
mendations rather  than  the  name  appointment  bureau  as 
more  indicative  of  the  function  of  the  college  with  refer- 
ence to  employment.  This  has  long  been  done  by  certain 
institutions.  It  has  already  been  said  that  during  the  au- 
tumn of  1919  two  sectional  intercollegiate  conferences  of 
college  appointment  bureaus  were  held. 

The  year  1910  marks  the  beginning  of  the  bureaus  of 
occupations  period.  In  that  year,  the  Women's  Educational 
and  Industrial  Union  established  the  pioneer  bureau,  and 
the  Association  of  Collegiate  Alumnse  created  its  standing 
committee  on  vocational  opportunities  other  than  teaching. 
This  new  interest  manifested  itself  in  the  colleges  in  the 
provision  of  addresses  by  outside  experts  in  different  fields, 
developing  before  long  into  definite  vocational  conferences. 
These  w^ere  arranged  sometimes  by  the  appointment  bureau, 
sometimes  by  the  dean ;  and  their  history  shows  them  falling 
increasingly  under  the  management  of  organizations  of 
students, — councils  and  leagues,  self-government  associa- 
tions, the  Young  Women's  Christian  Association,  special 
vocational  committees.  They  have  frequently  involved  the 
cooperation  of  neighboring  bureaus  of  occupations,  and  of 
branches  of  the  Association  of  Collegiate  Alumnae.  The 
first  series  of  this  sort  seems  to  have  been  arranged  at 
Cornell  University  in  191 1  by  Dr.  Gertrude  S.  Martin, 
then  adviser  of  women  in  that  institution  and  now  executive 
secretary  of  the  Association  of  Collegiate  Alumnae.  The 
University  of  Wisconsin  inaugurated  vocational  conferences 
for  its  women  students  as  long  ago  as  1912.  The  College 
of  Agriculture  and  Mechanic  Arts  of  the  University  of 
l^.Iontana  has  held  "vocational  congresses"  for  women  since 
1913,  attended  by  delegates  from  the  high  schools  of  the 


COLLEGES  AND  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS    423 

state,  whose  expenses  have  been  met  by  local  women's  clubs. 
Its  activity  in  this  respect  is  exceptional,  since  the  state 
vocational  colleges  have  been  for  the  most  part  negligent  of 
the  special  interests  of  their  women  students.  The  Uni- 
versity of  Michigan  has  abandoned  the  policy  of  an  annual 
conference  of  two  or  three  days'  duration  in  favor  of 
monthly  conferences  with  a  single  topic  and  a  speaker  who 
stays  long  enough  to  meet  students  in  personal  interviews. 
The  eastern  colleges  for  women  have  held  vocational  con- 
ferences more  or  less  regularly  for  a  number  of  years,  with 
outside  speakers  representing  both  their  own  alumna;  and 
other  professional  workers.  Of  late  they  have  commonly 
been  planned  as  a  series  of  sectional  and  round-table  meet- 
ings, and  provision  has  been  made  for  individual  inter- 
views with  speakers.  In  191 7  a  movement  was  inaugurated 
by  the  students  of  Wheaton  College  in  Massachusetts  for 
intercollegiate  undergraduate  conferences  on  vocational  op- 
portunities for  women.  Two  of  these  have  been  held  at 
Wheaton;  the  third  was  held  at  Radcliffe;  the  fourth  in 
March,  1920,  at  Cornell  University,  the  fifth  in  November, 
1920,  at  the  University  of  Pittsburgh.  They  have  been  at- 
tended by  delegates  from  the  undergraduate  bodies  of  the 
colleges  educating  women,  and  have  been  addressed  by  a 
number  of  distinguished  persons.^ 

The  inadequacies  of  the  annual  or  sporadic  vocational 
conference,  except  as  a  means  of  arousing  interest  and  fur- 
nishing preliminary  information,  were  early  recognized ;  and 
those  interested  set  about  providing  students  with  opportuni- 
ties for  more  continuous  and  specific  vocational  information 
and  guidance.  These  efTorts  for  some  years  took  the  form 
of  arrangements  for  visiting  or  resident  vocational  advisers 
or  counselors.  The  first  undertaking  of  the  kind  was  the 
cooperative  plan  between  the  Appointment  Bureau  of  the 
Women's  Educational  and  Industrial  Union  and  a  number 
of  the  New  England  colleges  for  women,  launched  in  1913, 
whereby  the  director,  Miss  Florence  Jackson,  made  regular 
visits  to  the  colleges  to  speak  on  specific  occupations  and 
to  confer  with  students.     Mount  Ilolyoke  and  Wellesley 

*  These  conferences  are  reported  in  Education  and  the  Journal  of 
Education. 


424        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

have  continued  this  cooperative  arrangement,  and  other 
colleges  have  participated.  Since  the  establishment  of  the 
Chicago  Collegiate  Bureau  of  Occupations  in  1913,  its 
manager,  Miss  Helen  Bennett,  has  similarly  served  as  visit- 
ing vocational  counselor  for  a  group  of  middle-western  in- 
stitutions; and  managers  of  more  recently  established 
bureaus  have  followed  suit.  Resident  vocational  counselors 
have  been  appointed  by  several  western  institutions,  giving 
all  or  part  of  their  time  to  consultation  with  women  students 
on  the  subject  of  their  vocational  plans  and  problems.  These 
counselors  have  sometimes  been  members  of  the  faculty, 
who  still  do  some  teaching,  as  at  Oberlin  College,  which 
appointed  such  an  officer  in  1912;  sometimes  members  of 
the  administrative  staff,  as  at  the  University  of  Wiscon- 
sin ;  sometimes  especially  appointed  for  this  work,  as  at  the 
University  of  Minnesota.  They  have  been  distinct  from 
the  appointment  bureau,  though  cooperating  with  it;  and 
have  done  no  direct  placement.  Their  function  has  been 
that  of  organizing  and  disseminating  vocational  informa- 
tion of  all  kinds,  arranging  for  lectures  and  conferences, 
and  giving  the  wisest  possible  vocational  assistance  to  stu- 
dents both  collectively  and  individually.  Their  relations  to 
the  faculty  have  been  various ;  but  they  have  frequently 
had  the  assistance  of  faculty  committees;  and  they  have 
suffered  less  from  isolation  from  both  educational  and  pro- 
fessional activities  'than  have  those  in  charge  of  appoint- 
ment bureaus.  Of  sixty-nine  colleges  educating  women, 
replying  in  1919  to  an  inquiry  by  the  Committee  on  Voca- 
tional Opportunities  of  the  Association  of  Collegiate 
Alumnae,  only  eight  reported  no  provision  for  voca- 
tional guidance  of  students.  Twenty  out  of  eighty-two 
so  replied  in  1917.  There  is  evident  a  marked  tendency 
toward  putting  the  general  supervision  of  vocational  guid- 
ance into  the  hands  of  college  deans,  an  indication  of  its 
growing  educational  importance.  Eleven  colleges  reported 
regularly  appointed  vocational  advisers  or  counselors,  as 
against  four  in  1917.  Nine  of  these  advisers  are  members 
of  the  faculty;  seven  do  some  teaching.  Only  two  give 
full  time  to  the  guidance  work.  There  is  closer  cooperation 
between  vocational  advisers  and  appointment  bureaus  than 


'COLLEGES  AND  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS    425 

formerly.  Two  advisers  are  in  charge  of  these  bureaus ; 
five  have  advisory  relations ;  two  have  no  connection ;  and 
•  in  two  cases  there  is  no  appointment  bureau. 

Vocational  guidance  in  the  colleges  is  part  of  the  larger 
f  movement  for  vocational  guidance  of  young  people  in  the 
i  schools  and  in  early  occupational  life.^  The  National  So- 
ciety for  Vocational  Guidance  cooperates  with  the  National 
Society  for  Vocational  Education.  Harvard  University 
maintains  a  Vocational  Guidance  Bureau  as  part  of  its  new 
Graduate  School  of  Education ;  and  a  number  of  institu- 
tions, including  Harvard,  Boston  University,  Columbia  Uni- 
versity, the  University  of  California,  and  the  Univer- 
sity of  Pittsburgh  have  given  regular,  extension,  or  sum- 
mer courses  on  vocational  guidance  for  the  benefit  chiefly 
of  teachers  and  others  having  to  do  with  the  direc- 
tion of  young  people.  A  certain  disrepute  into  which  the 
term  has  fallen  is  due  to  the  newness  of  the  movement, 
a  general  uncertainty  as  to  both  principles  and  methods, 
and  the  fact  that  many  have  undertaken  it  without  train- 
ing and  without  access  to  necessary  sources  of  information. 
There  has  been,  moreover,  a  sound  feeling  that  the  per- 
sonal direction  of  human  beings  toward  given  careers  is 
at  best  a  difficult  and  delicate  business.  AH  these  limita- 
tions have  existed  in  college  vocational  guidance ;  but  they 
are  likely  to  pass,  with  the  name,  when  the  thing  which 
it  stands  for  becomes  incorporated  into  a  larger  system  of 
professional  relations  inside  and  outside  of  the  college. 
Meanwhile,  the  most  hopeful  step  was  taken  when  the 
faculty  as  a  body  began  to  consider  the  vocational  bear- 
ings and  relations  of  the  undergraduate  curriculum,  to  co- 
operate actively  with  existing  vocational  agencies  in  the 
college,  and  even  to  accept  final  responsibility  for  the  whole 
matter.  A  growing  number  of  higher  institutions  are  ex- 
perimenting with  "life-career"  or  "orientation"  courses, 
given  in  the  freshman  or  sophomore  year.  There  seems  a 
place  for  a  more  advanced  course  on  occupations  and  the 
social  order.  Many  high  schools  are  giving  "occupations" 
courses. 
The  past  three  years  have  seen  the  appearance  of  four 
*See  Anna  Y.  Reed.     Junior  Wage  Earners  (i92o\ 


426        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

important  bulletins  on  the  pre-professional  aspects  of  the 
college  curriculum,  three  prepared  by  faculty  vocational 
committees,  one  by  an  appointment  bureau  in  close  coopera- 
tion with  the  faculty.  In  April,  1918,  Wellesley  College  is- 
sued a  pamphlet  entitled  Occupations  Towards  Which 
Wellesley  Courses  May  Lead;  in  May  of  the  same  year 
Oberlin  College  issued  a  bulletin  entitled  Vocational  Advice 
for  College  Students;  in  October,  1919  (dated  June), 
Leland  Stanford  Junior  University  issued  a  bulletin  entitled 
succinctly  Vocational  Information,  prepared  by  the  fac- 
ulty committee  on  vocational  guidance  and  the  most  com- 
plete thing  of  the  kind.  In  the  spring  of  1921  Vassar  Col- 
lege issued  a  bulletin  entitled  The  Relation  of  Vassar 
Courses  to  Vocational  Opportunities.  The  Obv';rlin  bulletin 
is  enlivened  by  letters  of  advice  from  professional  workers 
and  employers  in  the  various  fields.  It  arranges  the  pro- 
fessions alphabetically,  giving  under  each:  (i)  pre-pro- 
fessional courses  offered  at  Oberlin,  with  a  signed  statement 
from  a  professor  in  the  department  chiefly  concerned ; 
(2)  professional  courses  (at  Oberlin  or  elsewhere)  ;  (3) 
letters  of  advice  regarding  the  profession  from  graduates 
and  others  of  prominence;  (4)  selected  bibliography  with 
entries  marked  if  in  the  Oberlin  library  or  appointment 
bureau.  This  and  the  Leland  Stanford  bulletin  should  be  of 
special  value  to  the  eastern  colleges  for  women,  for  pur- 
poses of  comparison,  since  they  give  information  for  both 
men  and  women  students  in  other  parts  of  the  country. 

Other  institutions  are  preparing  bulletins  for  their  stu- 
dents and  leaflet  material  on  courses  useful  as  a  background 
for  special  professions,  such  as  the  University  of  California 
folder  on  journalism.  The  Association  of  Collegiate  Alum- 
nae appointed  in  1919  a  special  committee  on  pre-profes- 
sional courses,  to  render  a  report  in  1921.  A  committee 
on  professional  specifications  for  women  is  needed.  At 
least  one  of  the  women's  colleges  has  made  at  the  request 
of  its  board  of  trustees  a  careful  study  by  a  faculty  com- 
mittee of  the  vocational  aspects  of  its  curriculum.  The  re- 
port of  this  committee  considers:  (i)  occupations  for  which 
undergraduate  courses  directly  prepare,  as  indicated  by  the 
records  of  the  appointment  bureau ;  (2)   occupations  or  pro- 


COLLEGES  AND  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS   427 

fessions  for  which  the  college  course  provides  indirect  or 
partial  preparation;  (3)  college  courses  accepted  by  pro- 
fessional and  technical  schools  either  for  entrance  or  for 
advanced  standing.  Another  college  for  women  is  making 
a  study  of  every  department  of  instruction  in  cooperation 
with  outside  experts  and  representatives  of  the  alumnas  and 
the  public. 

The  duties  of  the  Leland  Stanford  faculty  committee  on 
vocational  guidance,  which  was  appointed  as  far  back  as 
1913,  are  thus  defined:  "To  cooperate  with  the  depart- 
ments of  the  university:  (a)  In  studying  the  vocations 
which  are  open  to  graduates  of  the  University  and  the 
kinds  of  training  needed  by  those  who  enter  these  voca- 
tions; (b)  in  disseminating  among  students  the  informa- 
tion necessary  to  make  an  intelligent  choice  of  a  vocation 
and  to  arrange  a  course  of  study  preparatory  to  entering 
the  vocation  chosen."  This  committee  of  six  includes  rep- 
resentatives of  various  departments,  the  dean  of  women,  and 
the  appointment  secretary.  It  appoints  sub-committees 
as  needed.  Each  member  assumes  special  responsibility  for 
a  certain  group  of  vocations,  and  students  interested  in 
these  fields  are  asked  to  consult  this  particular  member. 
Every  student  is  asked  at  registration  about  his  or  her 
vocational  interests  or  plans.  The  plan  of  establishing  ad- 
visory committees  of  the  faculty  for  the  several  professional 
fields  seems  worthy  of  extension.  Similar  committees  of 
experienced  alumnse  likewise  seem  desirable.  In  some  in- 
stitutions one  member  of  each  department  is  appointed  a 
special  consultant  on  vocational  matters  connected  with  that 
department. 

To  bring  these  various  forms  of  pre-profcssional  as- 
sistance clearly  and  comprehensively  before  students,  their 
essential  points  may  well  appear  in  the  college  catalogue  or 
course  of  study  bulletin  instead  of  in  separate  pamphlets: 
a  brief  statement  under  each  department  of  the  prc-profes- 
sional  bearings  of  its  courses ;  specific  announcements  re- 
garding faculty  vocational  committees,  vocational  advisers, 
the  appointment  bureau,  collections  of  printed  vocational 
material,  student  vocational  organizations  and  activities. 
It  may  not  be  long  before  all  colleges  will  require  a  pre- 


428       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

liminary  statement  of  professional  interests  or  intentions, 
positive  or  negative,  before  the  end  of  the  sophomore 
year,  when  major  groups  of  studies  are  chosen. 

Meanwhile,  the  colleges  are  dealing  with  increasing  sys- 
tem, effectiveness,  and  understanding  of  student  psychology 
with  the  difficult  problem  of  providing  information  on 
professional  matters,  although  they  are  coming  to  see  that 
it  is  a  problem  beyond  their  power  or  obligation  to  solve 
without  outside  cooperation.  They  are  maintaining  special 
collections  of  vocational  books,  pamphlets,  catalogues,  peri- 
odicals, and  clippings,  in  the  college  library  or  elsewhere ; 
they  are  using  undergraduate  and  alumnae  publications  for 
vocational  announcements  and  articles,  vocational  bulletin- 
boards  and  even  vocational  posters.  They  receive  and  dis- 
tribute printed  information  from  such  sources  as  the  New 
York  Bureau  of  Vocational  Information,  the  National  Com- 
mittee of  Bureaus  of  Occupations,  the  federal  and  state 
civil-service  commissions,  the  personnel  departments  of 
business  and  social  organizations,  as  well  as  information 
about  professional  schools  and  courses.  In  all  these  efforts 
they  are  valiantly  aided  by  student  organizations  and 
student  vocational  committees,  and  have  learned  not  a  little 
from  the  effective  publicity  methods  devised  by  students  for 
their  own  activities.  One  of  the  most  valuable  things  done 
by  Miss  Florence  Jackson  in  her  early  days  as  visiting  voca- 
tional counselor  in  various  New  England  colleges  was  the 
creation  of  cooperating  student  committees  charged  with 
the  duty  of  looking  after  college  vocational  publicity.  There 
is  a  real  need,  to-day,  however,  of  coordinating  student 
vocational  efforts.  Organizations  like  the  Young  Women's 
Christian  Association,  the  Student  Volunteers,  the  Con- 
sumers' League,  the  Intercollegiate  Community  Service, 
the  Intercollegiate  Socialist  Society,  maintain  vocational 
and  membership  committees,  distribute  literature,  and  con- 
duct study  courses  in  happy  but  wasteful  independence  of 
one  another.  These  groups  should  all  cooperate  with  a 
central  vocational  committee,  representing  not  special  stu- 
dent interests  but  the  entire  student  body. 

Through  all  these  different  vocational  activities,  carried 
on  more  and  more  as  related  expressions  of  a  conscious 


I 


COLLEGES  AND  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS    429 

educational  policy,  the  colleges  are  learning  their  distinctive 
function  in  an  organized  system  of  professional  relations. 
^Admitting  that  they  are  necessarily  stages  in  a  process, 
they  are  beginning  to  perceive  that  the  liberal  arts  cur- 
riculum, without  ceasing  to  be  liberal,  is  at  the  same  time 
inevitably  pre-professional.  The  two  conceptions  of  college 
education  are  merely  different  aspects  of  the  same  thing. 
In  order  that  the  individual  may  be  liberally  educated  in 
an  adequate  and  generous  sense  of  the  term,  the  college 
must  both  cultivate  his  mind  and  personality  and  indicate 
the  directions  in  which  he  may  contribute  productively  to 
the  life  of  his  generation  and  his  community.  Neither 
purpose  can  be  satisfactorily  achieved  without  the  other; 
and  the  college  is  uniquely  equipped  to  achieve  both.  But 
since  its  concern  is  always  with  young  people  and  their 
enfranchisement  through  coming  to  understand  themselves, 
their  resources,  and  their  opportunities,  the  college  cannot 
also  take  upon  itself  the  burden  of  their  direct  technical 
equipment  for  professions  and  their  actual  employment 
as  professional  workers.  Neither  can  it  divert  its  energies 
and  its  resources  to  the  accumulation  of  detailed  and  con- 
tinuous information  concerning  professional  training  and 
professional  occupations.  These  are  the  contributions  to 
be  made  by  other  members  of  the  professional  system. 
The  professional  contribution  of  the  college  is  three-fold: 
an  intimate  and  first-hand  knowledge  of  the  personal  and 
intellectual  characteristics  of  its  students  and  graduates, 
carefully  recorded ;  provision  for  their  preliminary  pro- 
fessional enlightenment  and  orientation ;  the  supplying  of 
prospective  professional  workers.  Actual  recruiting  is  not 
a  function  of  the  college.^ 

*The  war  has  taught  employers  to  use  them  in  this  way.  One  of 
the  eastern  colleges  for  women  reports  that  during  the  spring  of 
1919  the  college  was  visited  by  representatives  of  the  employment 
department  of  a  large  department  store,  the  Guaranty  Trust  Com- 
pany of  New  York,  the  War  Camp  Community  Service,  the  Young 
Women's  Christian  Associations,  the  Land  Army  of  America,  a 
large  reformatory  for  women,  and  various  teachers'  agencies,  who 
requested  the  opportunity  of  addressing  students  on  their  respective 
fields.  There  is  need  of  a  system  of  handling  these  appeals.  As 
they  now  come,  they  are  a  burden  to  the  college  and  a  distraction 
to  the  students. 


CHAPTER  XXII  1  c 

c 

SOME    SUGGESTIONS    FOR    WOMEN    PROFESSIONAL    W0RKER3      |    i 

This  final  chapter  is  not  a  summary  of  the  book  but 
a  set  of  informal  suggestions  and  injunctions  addressed 
first  of  all  to  young  women  thinking  seriously  of  becoming 
professional  workers  and  to  young  women  in  the  early 
years  of  occupational  life  who  are  asking  themselves 
What  next?  It  is  hoped,  however,  that  it  may  not  be 
without  some  value  to  experienced  professional  workers, 
to  those  educating  young  people  both  in  the  colleges  and 
in  the  professional  schools,  to  employers  of  these  young 
people,  and  to  all  who  are  candidly  and  courageously  facing 
the  professional  problems  of  the  present  day.  The  future 
of  every  profession  depends  upon  the  quality  of  its  new 
recruits  and  upon  the  kind  of  liberal  education  and  pro- 
fessional training  that  they  receive. 

The  first  thing  for  young  women  to  keep  in  mind  is 
that  some  intelligent  consideration  of  what  they  propose 
to  do  after  finishing  their  college  course  is  nowadays  an 
integral  part  of  liberal  education  itself.  To  arrive  at  the 
middle  or  the  end  of  the  senior  year  without  thinking 
of  themselves  as  prospective  workers  of  some  sort  is  to 
confess  that  they  are  not  liberally  educated  in  any  true 
sense  of  the  term.  To  think  and  to  act  liberally  mean  to 
be  free  both  from  the  pinch  of  necessity  and  the  pinch  of 
convention.  The  last  semester  scramble  for  a  "job"  re- 
flects no  credit  upon  an  institution  nor  upon  its  students. 

When,  then,  should  a  student  begin  to  think  of  herself 
as  a  prospective  worker?  Some  young  women  come  to 
college  with  pretty  definite  ideas  of  what  they  want  to  be, 
and  a  few  are  steadfast  to  these  aims  throughout  their 
course.  But  the  great  majority  have  been  so  much  ab- 
sorbed in  the  business  of  college  preparation,  and  after 

430 


SOME  SUGGESTIONS  431 

they  are  once  in  college,  are  so  deeply  absorbed  in  college 
life  itself,  that  they  give  little  attention  to  the  seemingly 
remote  prospects  of  what  they  are  to  do  after  leaving 
college.  This  is  undoubtedly  truer  of  the  eastern  colleges 
for  women  than  it  is  of  western  institutions ;  and  it  is  of 
course  truer  of  women  students  everywhere  than  it  is 
of  men.  College  education  is,  and  should  be,  an  engross- 
ing enterprise;  but  in  these  days  no  college  is  dealing  fairly 
by  its  students  if  it  turns  them  out  as  occupational  innocents 
into  the  complex  and  competitive  experiences  of  modern 
life.  The  college  should  invite  the  attention  of  its  students 
to  the  subject  of  preliminary  professional  choices  not  later 
than  the  second  half  of  the  sophomore  year  when  they 
are  beginning  to  plan  their  junior  and  senior  courses  and 
to  choose  "groups"  and  major  subjects.  If  college  au- 
thorities take  no  active  steps  in  this  direction,  students 
should  consider  independently  at  this  time  the  various  fields 
of  professional  endeavor  and  the  relations  to  them  of  the 
rest  of  the  course. 

It  is  essential,  however,  for  both  college  authorities  and 
students  to  remember  that  these  mid-college  professional 
choices  or  preferences  are  preliminary  and  tentative,  to  be 
tested  by  the  academic  work  and  the  "outside  activities"  of 
the  last  two  years.  The  importance  of  such  preliminary 
choices  is  based  upon  the  view  already  advanced  that  any 
adequate  liberal  education  in  the  modern  sense  must  be 
both  cultural  and  pre-professional,  looking  not  only  to  the 
development  of  the  individual  but  to  the  contribution  that 
he  or  she  may  make  to  the  life  of  the  times.  From  this 
point  of  view  neither  of  these  aims  can  be  attained  with- 
out regard  for  the  other;  and  a  laissez-faire  policy  has  no 
more  psychological  justification  in  education  than  it  has 
in  economics.  To  accomplish  its  purpose,  the  pre-profes- 
sional motive  must  be  considered  as  genuinely  educational 
as  any  other  motive,  although  it  must  not  be  pushed  to  the 
exclusion  of  other  motives.  In  the  later  years  of  the  college 
course  intellectual,  social,  and  aesthetic  interests  should 
fill  the  reservoirs  of  personality  upon  which  all  fruitful 
work  and  all  rewarding  leisure  perennially  depend. 

It  is  not  easy  to  say  just  how  these  undergraduate  pre- 


432       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

professional  choices  may  best  be  made  and  their  meaning 
brought  to  the  attention  of  students;  but  it  is  a  safe  gen- 
eral principle  that  just  so  far  as  possible  students  should 
be  put  in  the  way  of  making  them  themselves,  and  should 
be  assisted  chiefly  through  the  provision  of  a  continuous 
supply  of  authentic  and  up-to-date  vocational  information 
and  through  a  clear  indication  of  the  bearings  of  their  un- 
dergraduate courses  upon  professional  training  proper. 

At  Leland  Stanford  Junior  University  students  are  asked 
the  following  questions  at  registration:  "(i)  If  you  have 
decided  upon  a  vocation  which  you  have  decided  to  make 
your  life  work,  please  state  what  it  is  as  definitely  as  pos- 
sible. (2)  Would  you  like  assistance  in  arranging  a  course 
of  study  preparatory  to  the  above  vocation?  (3)  If  you 
have  made  no  choice  of  a  vocation,  would  you  like  as- 
sistance in  reaching  a  decision?  (4)  If  you  wish  informa- 
tion about  any  vocation,  please  indicate  which  ones."  ^  The 
university  records  extending  back  several  years  show  "that 
about  70  per  cent  of  the  students  have  made  a  definite 
choice  of  vocation  when  they  enter,  and  15  per  cent  make 
the  choice  soon  after  entering.  The  records  also  show  that 
a  large  percentage  of  those  who  have  not  made  a  definite 
choice  drop  out  of  the  University  in  the  first  two  years." 
These  figures  are  for  a  student  body  made  up  of  men 
and  women.  Figures  for  women  students  only  would  not 
show  so  many  nor  so  early  vocational  selections. 

In  addition  to  published  statements  pointing  out  the  pre- 
professional  aspects  of  the  curriculum,  the  colleges  are 
undertaking  to  provide  current  vocational  information  in 
the  various  ways  described  in  the  last  chapter.  Under- 
graduates, therefore,  are  increasingly  able  to  make  wise 
and  informed  pre-professional  decisions. 

An  important  element  in  such  decisions  is  a  just  estimate 
of  personal  fitness  and  aptitude.  Many  things  in  college 
life  help  students  to  measure  themselves  by  both  objective 
and  subjective  standards.  Academic  standing,  though  un- 
dergraduates affect  to  despise  it,  furnishes  an  impartial  and 
on  the  whole  satisfactory  measure  of  both  general  and 
special  intellectual  ability.    Careers  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa  stu- 

*  Vocational  Information.    Bulletin,  June,  1919. 


I 


SOME  SUGGESTIONS  433 

dents  dispose  of  that  easy  consolation  of  the  laggard  that 
valedictorians  are  never  heard  of  afterwards.^  The  gen- 
eral intelligence  tests  now  coming  into  wide  academic  use 
offer  a  valuable  basis  of  judgment,  and  on  the  whole  re- 
inforce the  evidence  of  marks  and  the  estimates  of  teach- 
ers and  fellow  students.  Tests  of  special  ability  and  the 
drafting  of  personnel  specifications  for  professional  em- 
ployments promise  concrete  assistance  in  determining  in- 
dividual suitability  for  given  lines  of  work.  And  in  vari- 
ous practical  and  informal  ways  college  life  tests  a  stu- 
dent's spirit,  pluck,  capacity  for  leadership  and  "team- 
work," ability  to  hold  steady  under  pressure,  and  to  keep 
her  balance  under  adulation  and  flattery.  While  no  confi- 
dence is  to  be  placed  in  the  numerous  popular  and  widely 
advertised  methods  of  determining  personal  fitness  for  an 
occupation  through  facial  contour,  coloring,  texture  of  skin, 
and  possession  or  lack  of  long  lists  of  specific  qualities, 
there  are  certain  general  questions  that  students  and  others 
making  vocational  choices  may  well  ask  themselves  honestly. 
Perhaps  the  most  important  is :  Do  I  like  to  deal,  and  am 
I  fitted  to  deal  successfully  primarily  with  people  or  with 
things  ?  Do  I  prefer  to  cooperate  with,  plan  for,  and  ad- 
just human  beings  in  my  daily  work  or  to  concern  myself 
with  materials  and  processes,  figures  and  other  symbols, 
facts,  ideas,  systems  and  programs  ?  Nearly  every  one  can 
tell  in  a  broad  way  in  which  type  of  activities  she  is  more 
genuinely  interested  and  to  which  she  can  give  her  mind 
and  energy  with  less  friction  and  exhaustion.  Some  people 
are  drained  by  steady  human  contacts ;  some  people  shrivel 
without  them.  Some  can  do  their  best  work  in  solitude ; 
some  under  the  stimulus  of  cooperation  and  discussion. 
The  two  types  of  activity  are  not  rigidly  separated,  and 
many  people  would  say  that  they  like  now  one  sort  of 
thing,  now  the  other.  But  there  is  a  real  distinction  between 
the  type  of  person  who  is  likely  to  succeed  as  a  social  case 
worker,  a  personnel  worker,  a  field  supervisor,  a  teacher 
of  young  people,  and  the  type  of  person  who  is  likely  to 
succeed  as  a  laboratory  or  research  worker,  a  statistician,  a 

*See  H.  A.  Hollingworth.     Vocational  Psychology  (iQi/),  espe- 
cially Chapters  5,  9,  10. 


434       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

library  cataloguer,  an  engineer,  a  scientific  manager.  In 
an  article  on  "Intelligence  and  Its  Uses,"  ^  Professor 
Edward  L.  Thorndike  says  that  for  practical  purposes  it 
is  sufficient  to  examine  for  three  "intelligences"  which 
may  or  may  not  be  combined  in  one  person, — mechanical 
intelligence,  social  intelligence,  and  abstract  intelligence. 
"By  abstract  intelligence  is  meant  the  ability  to  under- 
stand and  manage  ideas  and  symbols,  such  as  words,  num- 
bers, chemical  or  physical  formulae,  legal  decisions,  sci- 
entific laws  and  principles,  and  the  like.  Mechanical  in- 
telligence and  social  intelligence  refer  to  thought  and  action 
directly  concerned  with  actual  things  and  persons  in  one's 
hands  and  before  one's  eyes."  General  intelligence  tests 
and  college  work  measure  the  first  type  of  intelligence 
particularly.  Tests  of  special  ability  and  actual  occupations 
measure  the  two  other  types  as  well. 

Another  fundamental  question  is :  Am  I  naturally  a 
leader  or  a  follower?  Do  I  shrink  from  responsibihty,  or 
am  I  exhilarated  by  it  ?  Do  I  hold  steady  and  think  quickly, 
or  do  I  tend  to  go  to  pieces  in  emergencies?  A  related 
question  is:  Am  I  self-confident  or  self -depreciatory?  Am 
I  made  unhappy  and  distrustful  by  even  moderate  group 
censure,  or  do  I  like  maintaining  my  own  position  and 
winning  others  to  it?  Am  I  capable  of  intellectual  give- 
and-take  and  of  working  out  a  policy  or  program  with 
others  ?  Another :  Do  I  prefer  to  make  plans  or  to  carry 
them  out  ?  Am  I  what  is  called  an  idea-executive  or  a 
detail-executive?  Do  I  find  satisfaction  in  arranging  and 
organizing  details,  or  am  I  impatient  of  them,  or  likely  to 
be  swamped  by  them?  A  question  too  often  overlooked  in 
choosing  a  profession  is :  How  do  I  like  best  to  employ 
my  leisure?  These  questions  might  be  multiplied.  An- 
swers are  of  course  not  final,  but  may  usefully  make  clear 
characteristics  and  tendencies  that  certain  professions  will 
reinforce,  certain  other  professions  diminish  and  repress. 
To  what  extent  their  modification  is  desirable  for  success 
and  happiness  in  a  profession  is  a  matter  to  be  settled  for 
each  individual  case. 

Since  the  choice  of  a  profession  is  a  serious  matter,  and 
^Harper's  Magazine.    January,  1920. 


SOME  SUGGESTIONS  435 

professional  work  is  a  form  of  concrete  behavior,  the  "feel" 
of  which  cannot  be  attained  even  by  much  thinking,  there 
are  many  things  to  be  said  in  favor  of  "trying  oneself  out" 
experimentally  before  coming  to  a  final  decision  and  be- 
fore finishing  the  undergraduate  course.  Short  vacations 
may  be  used  for  observation  trips  and  sojourns  in  order  to 
learn  a  little  of  the  surroundings  and  conditions  of  various 
forms  of  professional  work.  Students  have  spent  these  va- 
cations in  settlement  houses,  psychopathic  hospitals,  chil- 
dren's homes,  reformatories  for  women,  as  substitute  or  ex- 
tra clerks  in  department  stores.  But  the  summer  vacation 
provides  the  best  opportunity  for  actual  work  of  an  experi- 
mental and  pre-professional  nature.  No  physically  and 
mentally  vigorous  person,  not  exhausted  by  heavy  responsi- 
bility, needs  more  than  a  month's  vacation.  Millions  of 
workers  younger  than  college  students  consider  themselves 
lucky  if  they  get  two  weeks.  Men  college  students  have  used 
their  summers  in  this  way  for  some  time,  especially  stu- 
dents looking  forward  to  forestry  and  engineering.  The 
Young  Men's  Christian  Association  has  recently  launched 
a  "Make  your  summer  count''  campaign.^  College  women 
before  the  war  were  somewhat  timorous  and  conservative 
in  this  matter  of  vacation  work.  But  experience  as  opera- 
tives in  munitions  plants  and  as  clerical  drudges  in  gov- 
ernment departments  has  brought  them  new  courage  and 
insight;  and  the  undergraduates  of  to-day  are  taking  surn- 
mer  positions  as  operatives  in  factories,  as  saleswomen  in 
department  stores,  as  clerks  in  offices,  as  helpers  in  vaca- 
tion camps  and  playgrounds,  quite  as  a  matter  of  course. 
No  longer  is  the  post  of  counselor  in  a  camp  for  the  chil- 
dren of  the  well  to  do  their  only  conception  of  summer 
work.  Moreover,  some  progressive  employers  are  working 
out  arrangements  for  taking  on  promising  young  college 
men  and  women  for  successive  summers  and  "rotating" 
them  through  the  several  departments  in  order  to  find  out 
their  aptitudes  and  to  give  them  an  understanding  of  the 
enterprise  as  a  whole.  It  is  not  unlikely  that  before  long 
the  colleges  will  have  agreements  with  selected  employers 
through  which  students  recommended  by  their  professors 
*See  pp.  168-171. 


436       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

and  by  the  college  health  authorities  will  be  nominated  for 
these  positions  at  an  apprentice  wage,  and  that  such  a  trial 
working  experience  will  be  considered  of  definite  educational 
value  and  will  be  eagerly  coveted.  The  practicability  of 
such  arrangements  varies  greatly  in  different  fields.  They 
are  quite  possible  in  many  industries,  offices,  department 
stores,  and  banks.  They  have  likewise  been  tried  by  social 
agencies,  health  laboratories,  and  county  farm  bureaus.  In 
medicine,  law,  and  nursing,  students  gain  a  preliminary  ac- 
quaintance with  the  profession  only  through  clerical,  labora- 
tory, or  social-work  positions.  With  the  growth  of  health 
centers,  there  may  be  opportunity  for  more  numerous  pre- 
liminary contacts  with  the  medical  and  nursing  professions. 
But  whether  students  secure  these  summer  positions  through 
cooperative  arrangements  or  through  their  own  individual 
efforts,  they  should  keep  well  in  mind  that  such  experiences 
are  not  substitutes  for  professional  training  but  only  what 
may  be  called  "finders"  for  both  the  worker  and  the  pro- 
fession. 

After  these  pre-professional  decisions  and  experiences, 
young  women  leaving  college  should  be  clear  in  their  own 
minds  as  to  what  professions  they  desire  and  are  quali- 
fied to  enter.  Then  comes  the  question  of  actual  pro- 
fessional training.  Shall  they  begin  a  professional  course 
at  once,  or  shall  they  test  themselves  further  through  sub- 
ordinate positions  in  the  field  of  their  choice  or  elsewhere 
in  the  working  world?  To  what  extent  can  they  achieve 
genuine  professional  training  and  standing  through  posi- 
tions of  an  apprentice  or  learner  type  without  specialized 
professional  study?  Answers  to  these  questions  vary 
greatly  according  to  the  profession  chosen,  the  nature  and 
length  of  the  preparation  required  for  it ;  they  also  vary 
according  to  the  character  and  circumstances  of  the  indi- 
vidual worker.  But  it  is  fair  to  say  that  to  attain  full  pro- 
fessional status  college  women  should  take  an  explicitly 
professional  course  either  immediately  after  leaving  college 
or  within  a  very  few  years.  Professional  training  is  in 
many  cases  so  prolonged  and  arduous,  professional  prac- 
tice calls  so  loudly  for  vigor  and  energy  and  adaptability 
that  no   woman  should  defer  beginning  her  professional 


SOME  SUGGESTIONS  437 

work  until  her  strength  and  spirits  begin  to  flag.  People 
attain  maturity  at  very  different  ages,  and  what  we  are 
pleased  to  call  youth  is  a  matter  of  attitude  rather  than 
of  years ;  but  women  should  commonly  look  forward  to  pro- 
fessional practice  by  the  time  that  they  are  thirty.  The 
objections  that  used  to  be  advanced  against  immediate 
entrance  upon  professional  preparation  on  the  ground  that 
it  unduly  prolongs  a  receptive  and  docile  attitude  of  mind 
and  tends  to  entangle  students  in  "the  snare  of  preparation," 
lose  much  of  their  force  in  face  of  the  present  tendency 
in  the  colleges  to  encourage  independent  thinking  and  ini- 
tiative and  in  face  of  the  preliminary  working  experiences 
described  above.  Yet  it  is  well  to  keep  in  mind  that  people 
of  narrow  and  limited  human  outlook  are  not  likely  to  be 
adequate  professional  workers.  In  the  case  of  medicine 
and  nursing,  it  is  undoubtedly  wise  to  begin  professional 
training  as  soon  as  possible.  In  the  case  of  teaching,  a 
year  or  two  of  experience  will  probably  reveal  to  the  young 
teacher  how  far  she  is  really  suited  to  the  profession  and 
how  greatly  she  needs  training  of  a  kind  that  the  college 
is  in  no  sense  qualified  to  give.  It  is  unfortunate  that 
she  often  learns  her  professional  lessons  at  the  expense  of 
the  children  she  teaches ;  and  this  should  be  guarded  against 
so  far  as  possible.  In  the  case  of  law  with  its  new  social 
and  political  call  to  women,  some  social  contacts  with  the 
legal  problems  of  small  wage-earners,  the  legal  difficulties 
and  dangers  of  women  and  girls  and  children  will  undoubt- 
edly give  purpose  to  professional  study  and  a  clue  through 
legal  intricacies.  In  scientific  work,  service  as  laboratory 
technicians  soon  reveals  that  graduate  study  is  needed  to 
raise  the  work  done  to  professional  rank.  In  commerce 
and  industry,  a  certain  amount  of  working  experience,  if 
not  secured  before  graduation,  may  be  necessary  to  show 
that  a  routine  skill  such  as  stenography,  typing,  or  filing 
is  not  enough  to  enable  women  to  deal  professionally  with 
the  large  problems  of  modern  production  and  distribution. 
Astute  secretaries  soon  discover  that  in  addition  to  secre- 
tarial techniques,  they  require  a  comprehensive  knowledge 
of  some  given  field  in  order  to  occupy  anything  more  than 
a  semi-professional  Jimbo.    The  swarms  of  young  women 


438       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

now  clamoring  to  become  employment  managers  on  the 
ground  that  they  have  always  liked  people  are  the  despair 
of  professional  workers  in  this  new  field,  who  lament  the 
by-products  of  publicity.  In  social  work,  the  multiplicity 
of  needs  and  the  futility  of  individual  efforts  force  the 
social  worker  to  professional  study  of  the  relations  of  pre- 
ventive and  remedial  work  and  to  the  acquirement  of  pro- 
fessional principles  and  techniques. 

The  college  woman  who  after  graduation  takes  a  posi- 
tion without  further  training  will,  if  she  is  professionally 
minded,  not  look  upon  her  work,  whatever  it  may  be,  as  a 
mere  "stop-gap"_.  performance,  either  between  college  and 
professional  training  or  between  college  and  marriage.  She 
will  keep  her  professional  aim  alive,  and  will  bend  her  pres- 
ent work  to  that  end.  However  unlike  it  may  seem,  she 
will  squeeze  out  of  it  some  drops  of  knowledge  or  experi- 
ence to  nourish  that  aim.  The  war  has  shown  us  the  value 
of  "substitute"  and  "allied"  occupational  experiences,  if 
they  are  intelligently  interpreted  and  used.  And  as  soon 
as  she  sees  her  way  clear,  she  will  seize  the  opportunity  for 
definite  professional  training.  Fortunately,  nowadays  all 
good  training  involves  a  considerable  amount  of  super- 
vised practice  work. 

A  word  needs  to  be  said  about  professional  courage ;  and 
just  now  this  is  not  a  purely  academic  virtue  for  women. 
In  many  fields  they  are  meeting  a  definite  reaction  from 
the  temporary  professional  hospitalities  of  the  war;  and 
during  the  next  few  years  they  will  need  to  exercise  steadi- 
ness and  pluck.  They  will  have  to  learn  not  to  ask  nor  to 
expect  any  concessions  whatever  on  the  grounds  that  they 
are  women,  nor  even  sometimes  on  the  grounds  that  they 
are  human,  since  any  weakness  is  likely  to  be  considered 
feminine.  They  will  have  to  expect  to  be  judged  even 
more  rigorously  than  young  men  of  the  same  education 
doing  similar  work,  and  to  breathe  an  atmosphere  of  being 
on  trial.  And  as  comparative  newcomers  they  will  have 
to  fight  their  own  diffidence  in  refusing  to  accept  as  a 
general  law  the  assumption  that  women  irrespective  of 
their  abilities  should  always  occupy  subordinate  profes- 
sional positions.     This  assumption  is  breaking  down;  but 


SOME  SUGGESTIONS  439 

it  will  become  obsolete  only  when  women  themselves  de- 
cline to  acquiesce  in  it,  and  persistently  take  the  stand  that 
they  expect  to  be  judged  on  their  professional  merits  and 
to  share  professional  responsibilities.  It  still  obtains  mark- 
edly in  the  sciences  and  in  government  services.  With  the 
extension  of  systems  of  promotion  based  on  tests  and 
ratings  this  stalling  of  competent  women  in  lower  posi- 
tions will  be  greatly  diminished. 

Professional  courage  needs  to  be  shown  also  in  refusing 
to  tolerate  undesirable  working  conditions  and  in  breaking 
away  from  positions  that  are  unsatisfactory  and  have  little 
professional  outlook.  Young  women  who  have  been  at 
work  for  several  years  after  leaving  college  especially  need 
to  look  themselves  and  their  professional  future  squarely 
in  the  face  and  to  ask  what  is  the  professionally  desirable 
next  step — to  take  some  time  for  further  study,  to  seek  a 
better  position  in  the  same  field,  or  to  consider  some  other 
field.  There  is  not  infrequently  a  period  of  discourage- 
ment and  timidity  for  a  woman  who  finds  herself  after 
several  years  in  what  is  practically  a  professional  "blind- 
alley"  position  or  occupation.  Fortunately,  there  is  an  in- 
creasing number  of  professional  occupation  bureaus  and 
employment  services  to  assist  her  in  making  needed  pro- 
fessional readjustments. 

No  less  important  is  the  essentially  professional  courage 
of  persistence,  of  sticking  at  a  piece  of  work  and  seeing 
it  through.  One  of  the  charges  brought  against  women  is 
that  of  their  occupational  restlessness  and  instability.  This 
is  far  more  true  of  women  in  "stop-gap"  occupations,  who 
teach  for  a  few  years,  or  do  clerical  work  for  a  few  years, 
than  it  is  of  professional  women.  There  is  considerable 
easy  generalization  from  one  group  applied  to  the  other. 
But  professional  women  need  to  be  on  their  guard  against 
this  danger  and  to  remember  that  one  of  the  marks  of  a 
profession  is  that  it  is  a  permanent  and  serious  calling. 
An  official  in  a  great  corporation  notably  friendly  to  the 
employment  of  college  women  says :  "I  think  that  perhaps 
...  it  would  be  good  advice  to  trained  women  going  into 
business  to  recognize  that  it  is  still  substantially  a  pioneer 
movement  and  that  they  can  help  themselves  and  those  who 


440       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

will  follow  them  by  persisting  in  the  fields  which  they 
enter,  having  patience  to  develop  them  in  a  satisfactory 
way.  This  remark  is  not  made  because  of  any  unsatis- 
factory experience  on  our  part,  but  rather  because  I  have 
noted  a  certain  roving  tendency  among  a  number  of  col- 
lege women." 

Women  have  also  hitherto  lacked  professional  courage  in 
respect  to  standing  out  for  salaries  equal  to  those  of  men 
of  the  same  training  doing  equivalent  work.  This  is  a  defect 
common  to  all  newly  group-conscious  workers.  But  the 
difficulty  is  less  serious  for  brain  workers  than  for  hand 
workers ;  and  there  is  no  inherent  impossibility  of  measuring 
objectively  the  respective  professional  achievements  of  men 
and  women.  It  is  fairly  done  in  a  number  of  instances. 
The  matter  of  equal  salaries  is  not  so  simple  as  it  looks, 
and  it  is  not  enough  simply  to  repeat  the  "slogan"  of  "equal 
pay  for  equal  work,"  since  employers  find  it  easy  to  make 
their  own  definitions  of  the  word  equal.  Women  must 
insist  upon  scientific  estimates  and  not  upon  conventional 
generalizations ;  and  they  must  likewise  not  expect  equal 
pay  for  work  that  is  not  really  equal. 

Another  respect  in  which  women  are  prone  to  show  a 
lack  of  professional  financial  courage  and  professional 
group  spirit  and  ethical  sense  is  in  their  readiness  to  accept 
salaries  below  professional  levels  and  even  below  a  living 
wage  on  the  strength  of  being  at  or  near  home,  in  con- 
genial surroundings,  and  so  on.  Such  an  attitude  is  on 
a  par  with  that  of  the  mythical  industrial  worker  for  "pin- 
money,"  who  now  seems  to  exist  chiefly  in  the  imagination 
of  the  employer  paying  low  wages.  It  is  perfectly  fair 
of  course  for  a.  professional  woman  to  do  part  work  for 
part  pay,  but  to  accept  privileges  and  perquisites  in  lieu 
of  the  salary  normally  attaching  to  a  post  is  to  depress 
the  pay  of  her  successor  and  indirectly  of  all  workers  in 
the  field.  Teachers  and  librarians  are  perhaps  the  worst 
sinners  in  this  respect,  and  remind  us  that  in  the  profes- 
sions prestige,  privilege,  and  convenience  still  sometimes 
rule  instead  of  economic  justice. 

In  fact,  all  women  going  into  professional  occupations 
need  to  keep  steadily  in  mind  that  no  true  professional 


SOME  SUGGESTIONS  441 

worker  can  be,  by  the  very  definition  of  the  term,  an  in- 
dividualist. Professional  workers  are  under  obligations  to 
their  fellow  workers,  present  and  future,  and  they  are 
under  obligations  to  render  public  service.  Women  need 
to  strengthen  in  every  possible  way  their  sense  of  pro- 
fessional pride  and  professional  responsibility.  To  this 
end  they  should  seek  membership  in  professional  clubs  and 
associations,  and  should  play  an  active  part  in  them. 
Whether  these  associations  should  be  of  both  men  and 
women  or  of  women  alone  will  depend  upon  the  given 
professional  situation.  The  question  has  been  discussed 
in  Chapter  II.  In  many  professions  it  is  no  doubt  desirable 
for  women  to  belong  to  both  types — to  women's  for  the  sake 
of  a  fuller  opportunity  to  participate  in  the  forming  and 
carrying  out  of  policies,  to  men's  for  the  sake  of  their 
broader  professional  scope  and  emphasis  of  joint  profes- 
sional action.  The  single  association  for  both  men  and 
women  workers  is  certainly  the  ideal. 

All  that  has  been  said  of  the  importance  of  courage  and 
staying  power  and  the  maintenance  of  professional  stand- 
ards does  not  mean  that  women  should  enter  professional 
life  in  any  spirit  of  jealousy  or  antagonism  towards  pro- 
fessional men.  The  difficult  professional  problems  of  the 
day  can  be  successfully  confronted  and  dealt  with  only  by 
men  and  women  working  together  fairly  and  cooperatively. 
The  world  needs  more  acutely  than  ever  before  profes- 
sional workers  distributing  their  efforts  where  they  are 
most  needed,  not  mutually  hostile  and  suspicious  men  and 
women.  The  rabid  feminist  or  anti-feminist,  whether  man 
or  woman,  will  not  be  a  useful  member  of  a  professional 
group,  and  will  come  to  seem  more  than  a  little  archaic. 
l>ut  it  behooves  women  to  remember  that  they  are  relatively 
new  members  of  the  professions,  for  the  most  part  greatly 
in  the  minority,  and  not  to  attach  too  great  importance 
to  the  resentment — frequently  unintentional — that  always 
manifests  itself  in  one  form  or  another  over  the  introduc- 
tion of  new  workers  into  any  group. 

Professional  women  as  yet  have  not  gone  extensively  into 
independent  practice.  Although  this  has  perhaps  been  due 
chiefly   to  financial  inexperience  and   timidity,   it   may  be 


442       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

that  it  represents  an  advantage  rather  than  a  limitation, 
since  it  ranges  them  definitely  on  the  side  of  public  service 
in  one  form  or  another  instead  of  on  the  side  of  a  kind 
of  professional  competition  that  is  coming  to  seem  outworn. 
It  disentangles  them  from  old  professional  conventions  and 
rivalries,  and  puts  them  at  the  service  of  various  social 
groups.  Where  they  are  setting  up  for  themselves,  they 
seem  to  be  doing  it  in  the  modern  spirit  of  group  consulting 
practitioners. 

The  various  methods  of  securing  salaried  employment  and 
the  prospects  of  some  form  of  nation-wide  professional 
employment  service  have  been  discussed  in  Chapter  XX  and 
elsewhere.  But  no  reliance  upon  such  services  can  take  the 
place  altogether  of  individual  initiative  and  direct  applica- 
tion to  employers.  This  is  in  itself  a  valuable  part  of  pro- 
fessional training.  With  the  growth  of  modern  personnel 
departments  in  organizations  and  firms,  proper  direct  appli- 
cation is  bound  to  become  less  haphazard  and  wasteful. 

The  problem  of  professional  women  and  marriage  has 
been  discussed  briefly  in  Chapter  II.  With  our  enlarging 
views  of  both,  the  two  things  are  coming  to  seem  less  mu- 
tually exclusive.  It  would  be  disastrous,  if  it  were  not 
futile,  to  ask  women  to  choose  between  professional  ca- 
reers and  marriage.  More  and  more,  professional  women 
are  marrying;  more  and  more,  married  women  are  profes- 
sional. Neither  status  is  fundamentally  incompatible  with 
the  other,  in  spite  of  innumerable  practical  difficulties.  In 
the  future,  professional  men  may  be  expected  to  make 
adjustments  as  well  as  professional  women.  What  has 
been  said  of  the  development  of  group  practice  indicates  one 
line  of  modification.  But  whether  she  continues  her  pro- 
fessional work  actively  or  not,  the  modern  woman  with 
professional  training  and  experience  is  bound  to  make  them 
felt  for  the  public  good  in  the  home  and  the  community. 


SELECTED  AND  ANNOTATED  READING  LIST 

This  list  is  not  a  bibliography.  It  merely  calls  attention 
to  some  of  the  more  recent  or  distinctive  publications.  More 
detailed  references  are  to  be  found  in  the  text. 

The  material  on  professional  occupations  is  scattering, 
and  recent  events  render  much  of  it  obsolete.  Some  of  the 
studies  of  opportunities  for  v^^omen  are  more  detailed  than 
anything  existing  for  men.  But  the  new  interest  in  better 
professional  adjustments  is  manifesting  itself  in  efforts  to 
provide  specific  occupational  information  for  young  men. 
Women  may  well  consult  this  material  more  freely  than  they 
have  done  in  the  past,  in  order  to  secure  a  juster  and 
broader  understanding  of  the  actual  situation  and  develop- 
ments in  the  several  professional  fields.  There  is,  more- 
over, a  tendency  toward  describing  professions  in  terms  of 
both  men  and  women  workers,  which  is  to  be  commended, 
and  needs  to  be  strengthened.  In  fact,  there  is  need  of 
much  more  thorough  comparative  studies  of  professions 
and  professional  psychology.  Professional  scliools  and  pro- 
fessional associations  are  beginning  to  recognize  the  im- 
portance of  analyzing  the  careers  of  their  graduates  and 
members,  of  cooperating  more  closely  with  employers  and 
workers,  and  of  exchanging  information  among  the  pro- 
fessions. At  present,  much  of  the  most  useful  material  is 
to  be  found  in  pamphlets,  reports,  catalogues,  and  periodi- 
cals, rather  than  in  books. 

Four  main  groups  of  material  may  conveniently  be  dis- 
tinguished. 

I.     PUBLICATIONS  DESIGNED  PRIMARILY  FOR  MEN  BUT  USEFUL 

FOR  women: 

There  are  few  books  for  men  dealing  with  professions  in 
general. 

443 


444       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

Vocational  Guidance  for  the  Professions,  by  Edwin  Tenney 
Brewster,  Rand,  McNally  Company  (1917),  is  a  popular  handbook, 
addressed  chiefly  to  high  school  students. 

Occupations,  A  Text-Book  in  Vocational  Guidance,  by  Enoch  B. 
B.  Gowin  and  William  A.  Wheatley,  Ginn  and  Company  (1916), 
includes  brief  descriptions  of  occupations  of  a  professional  char- 
acter. A  Guide  to  the  Study  of  Occupations,  by  Frederick  J.  Allen, 
Harvard  University  Press  (1921),  promises  to  be  valuable. 

The  current  demand  for  occupational  information  is 
indicated  by  the  appearance  of  several  series  of  books  on 
professions  and  allied  occupations.  Each  volume  is  a  brief 
popular  treatment  of  a  given  occupation,  based  on  little 
special  investigation  but  written  by  a  well-known  practi- 
tioner in  the  field  described.  Volumes  even  in  the  same 
series  vary  greatly  in  merit  and  in  the  amount  of  informa- 
tion given. 

The  Training  Scries,  published  by  the  J.  B.  Lippincott  Company, 
includes  Training  of  a  Salesman,  by  William  Maxwell;  Training 
for  the  Electrical  Railway  Business,  by  C.  P.  Fairchild ;  Training 
for  the  Newspaper  Trade,  by  Don  C.  Seitz;  Training  for  the 
Stage,  by  Arthur  Hornblow ;  Training  and  Rewards  of  the  Physi- 
cian, by  Dr.  Richard  C.  Cabot;  Training  of  a  Forester,  by  Gifford 
Pinchot;  Training  of  a  Life  Insurance  Agent,  by  Warren  M. 
Horner;  Training  and  Rewards  of  a  Lawyer,  by  Harlan  F.  Stone, 
is  announced. 

The  Opportunity  Series,  published  by  Harper  and  Brothers,  con- 
tains brief  volumes  on  Opportunities  in  Chemistry,  by  Ellwood 
Hendrick — very  slight;  in  Farming  and  Out  of  Doors,  by  Edward 
Owen  Dean — of  practical  value;  in  Merchant  Ships,  by  Nelson  Col- 
lins; in  the  Newspaper  Business,  by  James  Melvin  Lee — also  good; 
in  Aviation,  by  Arthur  Sweetzer;  in  Engineering,  by  Joseph  M. 
Horton. 

The  Young  Man  and  Vocations  Series,  which  the  Macmillan  Com- 
pany is  beginning,  is  to  include  the  following  volumes:  The  Young 
Man  and  the  Law,  by  Judge  Simeon  E.  Baldwin ;  The  Young  Man 
and  the  Ministry,  by  Rev.  Charles  R.  Brown;  The  Young  Man  and 
Teaching,  by  Dean  Henry  Parks  Wright ;  The  Young  Man  and 
Medicine,  by  Dr.  Lewellys  F.  Barker;  Tlie  Young  Man  and  Banking, 
by  Frank  A.  Vanderlip;  The  Young  Man  and  Meclianical  Engineer- 
ing, by  Lester  P.  Breckinridge ;  The  Young  Man  and  Electrical 
Engineering,  by  Charles  F.  Swain;  The  Young  Man  and  Civil 
Engineering,  by  George  F.  Swain ;  The  Young  Man  and  Farming, 
by  L.  H.  Bailey;  The  Young  Man  and  Government  Service,  by  Wil- 
liam H.  Taft.  The  two  volumes  which  have  appeared.  The  Young 
Man  and  the  Lazv  and  The  Young  Man  and  Teaching  (1920),  are 
written  by  distinguished  elders. 


I 


SELECTED  AND  ANNOTATED  READING  LIST  445 

The  Opportunity  Monographs,  issued  during  1919  by  the  Federal 
Board  for  Vocational  Education  in  its  Vocational  Rehabilitation 
Series  for  disabled  soldiers,  are  brief  pamphlets  largely  derived 
from  published  material  but  containing  considerable  concrete  in- 
formation. Monographs  dealing  with  occupations  of  professional 
character  are  Forestry  Pursuits;  Employment  Management;  The 
Law  as  a  Vocation;  Journalism  as  a  Vocation;  Farm  Management 
as  a  Vocation;  Teaching  as  a  Vocation;  General  Farming  as  a 
Vocation;  Commercial  Occupations. 

Personnel  Systcfn  of  the  United  States  Army,  Two  Volumes, 
Government  Printing  Office  (1919),  gives  a  detailed  account  of  the 
significant  work  done  during  the  war  by  the  Army  Committee  on 
Classification  of  Personnel  of  the  War  Department.  It  contains 
a  number  of  professional  specifications,  and  is  of  value  to  all 
persons  concerned  with  the  selection  and  placement  of  professional 
workers. 

Trade  Specifications  and  Index  of  Professions  and  Trades  in  the 
Army,  Third  Edition  (November,  1918),  is  a  manual  issued  by 
this  Committee,  containing  occupational  classifications  and  many 
professional   specifications. 

Army  Mental  Tests,  by  Robert  M.  Yerkes  and  Clarence  S. 
Yoakum,  Henry  Holt  and  Co.  (1920),  describes  the  parallel  under- 
taking of  giving  group  intelligence  tests  to  the  army. 

The  Harvard  Bureau  of  Vocational  Guidance  has  issued  or 
sponsored  several  books  on  professional  occupations  and  voca- 
tion guidance,  including  The  Law  as  a  Vocation,  second  edition 
(1919)  ;  Advertising  as  a  Vocation,  Macmillan  Co.  (1919);  Busi- 
ness Employments,  Ginn  and  Company  (1916)  and  A  Guide  to  the 
Study  of  Occupations  (1921),  all  by  Frederick  J.  Allen;  The  I'oca- 
tional  Guidance  Movement,  by  John  M.  Brewer,  Macmillan  Com- 
pany (1918)  ;  and  Readings  in  Vocational  Guidance,  by  Meyer 
Bloomfield,  Ginn  and  Company  (1916). 

A  Study  of  Engineering  Education,  by  Charles  Riborg  Mann, 
Carnegie  Foundation  for  the  Advancement  of  Teaching,  Bulletin 
Number  Eleven  (1918),  throws  light  on  newer  movements  in  these 
professions,  and  is  suggestive  for  all  concerned  with  professional 
education. 

Report  of  Committee  of  the  Engineering  Council  on  Classification 
and  Compensation  of  Engineers  (Pamphlet,  1919)  contains  much 
with  respect  to  salaries  and  grades  that  is  useful  for  other  pro- 
fessions. 

II.      PUBLICATIONS  DESIGNED  FOR  BOTH   MEN  AND  WOMEN  : 

Vocational  Advice  for  College  Students,  Bulletin  of  Oberlin  Col- 
lege, New  Series  142,  May,  1918,  contains  brief  descriptions  of  the 
occupations,  arranged  alphabetically,  including  statements  from 
members  of  the  faculty  of  pre-professional  and  professional  courses 
offered  at  Oberlin,  and  professional  courses  elsewhere ;  letters  of 
advice  from  practitioners  of  the  several  professions,  and  bibliogra- 


446        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

phies  of  material  on  the  professions  to  be  found  in  the  Oberlin 
libraries.  Some  of  the  newer  professions,  such  as  employment 
management  or  personnel  service,  are  not  dealt  with;  the  treatment 
of  the  sciences  and  psychology  is  inadequate.  Advertising,  journal- 
ism and  publishing,  the  ministry  and  other  religious  occupations, 
including  missionary  work  and  service  under  the  Young  Men's 
and  Young  Women's  Christian  Associations,  are  particularly  well 
described. 

Vocational  Infortnation,  prepared  by  the  Committee  on  Voca- 
tional Guidance,  Leland  Stanford  Junior  University  Bulletin,  Third 
Series,  Number  22,  June,  1919,  is  more  detailed  than  the  Oberlin 
bulletin,  although  lacking  the  concrete  interest  of  advice  from  those 
in  the  professions.  Its  accounts  of  agriculture,  the  commercial 
occupations,  education,  including  psychological  examining,  engineer- 
ing, medicine  and  public  health,  science  and  applied  science  are 
particularly  good.    Its  references  are  useful. 

The  Report  of  the  Congressional  Joint  Committee  on  Reclassi- 
fication of  Salaries  in  the  Washington  Civil  Service,  Government 
Printing  Office,  March,  1920,  contains  specifications  of  positions 
on  the  basis  of  duties  and  qualifications,  and  schedules  of  compensa- 
tion for  the  respective  classes.  Its  findings  with  respect  to  present 
conditions  in  the  Civil  Service,  comparison  with  non-governmental 
employments,  and  recommendations  looking  to  the  establishment 
of  the  Civil  Service  Commission  as  a  modern  central  personnel 
agency  for  the  government  are  of  great  value  for  all  persons 
interested  in  matters  of  occupations  and  employment. 

State  and  city  reclassifications,  such  as  those  of  New  York  State 
and  City,  Massachusetts,  Ohio,  Illinois,  and  the  recent  Canadian 
Civil  Service  Reclassification,  are  also  valuable. 

Employment  Psychology,  by  Henry  C.  Link,  Macmillan  Company 
(1919),  gives  the  results  and  techniques  of  vocational  psychological 
tests  without  making  extravagant  claims. 

Recent  publications  on  the  professional  aspects  of  industry 
and  commerce  are  almost  too  numerous  to  mention,  but  the 
following  titles  will  be  found  useful : 

Scientific  Management  and  Labor,  by  R.  F.  Hoxie,  D.  Appleton 
and  Company   (1915). 

The  Works  Manager  To-day,  by  Sidney  Webb.  Longmans,  Green 
and  Company  (1917). 

Modern  Industrial  Movements,  edited  by  Daniel  Bloomfield. 
H.  W.  Wilson  Company  (1919). 

The  Administration  of  Industrial  Enterprises,  by  Edwin  D. 
Jones.     Longmans,  Green  and  Company   (1916). 

When  the  Workmen  Help  You  Manage,  by  W.  R.  Bassett.  Cen- 
tury Company  (1919). 

What  Is  on  the  Worker's  Mind,  by  Whiting  Williams.  Charles 
Scribner's  Sons  (1920). 


1 


SELECTED  AND  ANNOTATED  READING  LIST  447 

Personnel  Administration,  by  Ordway  Tead  and  Henry  C.  Met- 
calf,  McGraw-Hill  Book  Company  (1920),  is  probably  the  fullest 
account  of  principles  and  methods  in  the  field  of  industrial  rela- 
tions. 

The  Proceedings  of  the  Annual  Convention  of  the  National  As- 
sociation of  Employment  Managers  (now  called  The  Industrial 
Relations  Association  of  America),  (May,  1919,  1920)  and  the 
journal  of  the  Association,  Personnel,  give  current  information  and 
discussion. 

Employment  Management  Series  (Nine  Bulletins,  1919-1920), 
Federal  Board  for  Vocational  Education,  is  prepared  by  experts. 

Commercial  Research,  by  C.  S.  Duncan.  Macmillan  (Tompany 
(1919). 

Business  Research  and  Statistics,  by  J.  G.  Frederick.  D.  Appleton 
and  Compattiy  (1920). 

Business  Statistics,  by  Melvin  T.  Copeland.  Harvard  University 
Press    (1917). 

An  Introduction  to  Statistics  (1917),  and  Readings  and  Problems 
in  Statistical  Methods  (1920),  by  Horace  Secrist.  Macmillan 
Company. 

Allan  C.  Haskell.  How  to  Make  and  Use  Graphic  Charts.  Codex 
Book  Company,  Ipc.  (1919). 

Graphic  Methods  for  Presenting  Facts,  by  Willard  C.  Brinton. 
Engineering  Publishing  Company   (1914). 

Other  publications  bearing  on  the  subject-matter  of  the 
several  chapters  are : 

Organized  Efforts  for  the  Improvement  of  Methods  of  Adminis- 
tration in  the  United  States,  by  Gustavus  A.  Weber.  D.  Appleton 
and  Company  (1919). 

Americanization  Studies  Made  Under  the  Auspices  of  the  Car- 
negie Corporation  of  New  York,  Allen  T.  Burns,  Director.  Eleven 
volumes.     Harper  and  Brothers  (1920-1921). 

Advertise!     By  E.  Sampson.     D.  C.  Heath  and  Company  (1918). 

Principles  of  Advertising  Arrangement,  by  Frank  Parsons. 
Prang  Company   (1912). 

Attention  I'alue  of  Advertisements.  New  York  University  Bu- 
reau of  Business  Research  (Pamphlet,  1920). 

Effective  House  Organs,  by  Robert  E.  Ramsey.  D.  Appleton  and 
Company   (1920). 

A.  B.  C.  of  Exhibit  Planning,  by  E.  G.  and  M.  S.  Routzahn. 
Survey  and  Exhibit  Series.     Russell  Sage  Foundation  (1919). 

Traveling  Publicity  Campaigns,  by  Mary  S.  Routzahn.  Same 
Series  (1920). 

Community  Drama  and  Pageantry,  by  Mary  P.  Beegle  and  Jack 
A.  Crawford.    Yale  University  Press  (1916). 

Community  Drama,  by  Percy  Mackaye.  Houghton  Mifflin  Com- 
pany (1917). 


448       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

Patriotic  Drama  in  Your  Town,  by  Constance  D.  Mackaye. 
Henry  Holt  and  Company   (1918). 

The  Little  Theatre  in  the  United  States,  by  same  author.  Henry 
Holt  and  Company  (1917). 

The  Open-Air  Theatre,  by  Sheldon  Cheney.  Mitchell  Kennerlejir 
<i9i8). 

Cinema  Craftsmanship,  by  Frances  T.  Patterson.  Harcourt, 
Brace  and  Howe  (1920). 

Hoiv  to  Write  Photo-Plays,  by  John  Emerson  and  Anita  Loos. 
James  A.  McCann  Company  (1920). 

The  New  World  of  Science,  by  Robert  M.  Yerkes.  Century 
Company  (1920). 

The  Measurement  of  Intelligence,  by  Lewis  M.  Terman.  Hough- 
ton Mifflin  Company  (1916). 

The  Psychology  of  Subnormal  Children,  by  Leta  S.  Hollingworth. 
Macmillan  Company  (1920). 

The  Principles  of  Mental  Hygiene,  by  William  A.  White,  M.  D. 
Macmillan  Company  (1917). 

The  Mental  Hygiene  of  Childhood,  by  the  same  author.  Little, 
Brown,  and  Company  (1919). 

Mental  Hygiene: — various  articles  such  as  Mental  Hygiene  and 
the  Public  School,  by  Arnold  Gesell,  January,  1919;  The  Responsi- 
bilities of  the  Universities  in  Promoting  Mental  Hygiene,  by  C. 
Macfie  Campbell,  M.  D.,  April,  1919;  Program  for  Mental  Hygiene 
in  the  Public  Schools,  April,  1920;  Mental  Hygiene  of  Industry, 
by  Mary  C.  Jarrett,  October,  1920. 

The  Vocational  Guidance  Movement,  by  John  M.  Brewer.  Mac- 
millan Company   (1918). 

Cleveland  Education  Survey:  25  Volumes  (1915-1917).  Allen 
T.  Burns,  Director.  Cleveland  Foundation.  The  last  volume,  by 
Leonard  P.  Ayres,  under  whose  direction  most  of  the  surveys  were 
made,  is  on  methods  and  costs. 

Cleveland  Recreation  Survey.  7  Volumes  (1918).  Roland  Haines, 
Director.     Cleveland   Foundation. 

Cleveland  Hospital  and  Health  Survey.  li  Volumes  (in  pam- 
phlet form,  1920).  Haven  Emerson,  M.  D.,  Director.  Cleveland 
Hospital  Council. 

A  Survey  of  the  Administration  of  Justice  in  Cleveland  is  being 
made  during  1920-1921  by  the  Cleveland  Foundation,  under  the 
direction  of  Dean  Roscoe  Pound,  Prof.  Felix  Frankfurter,  and 
Mr.  Reginald  H.  Smith. 

Gary  Public  Schools.  8  Parts.  General  Education  Board  (1918- 
T919). 

III.       PUBLICATIONS   DESIGNED   PRIMARILY    FOR    WOMEN  : 

Vocations  for  Business  and  Professional  Women,  Bulletin  Num- 
ber One,  Bureau  of  Vocational  Information,  New  York  (May, 
1919),  is  a  pamphlet  containing  brief  but  explicit  and  trustworthy 
information  about  a  wide  range  of  occupations  for  women. 


SELECTED  AND  ANNOTATED  READING  LIST  449 

The  Bureau  of  Vocational  Information  is  issuing  four  intensive 
studies  of  women  in  special  occupations  which  set  a  high  standard 
in  thoroughness  and  breadth : 

Statistical  Work  for  IV omen.  Bulletin  Number  Two  (1921). 

Women   in    the  Law:    An   Analysis   of   Training,   Practice,  and 

Salaried  Positions.    Bulletin  Number  Three  (1920). 

The  Woman  Chemist.     Bulletin  Number  Four   (1921). 

Positions   of  Responsibility  in  Department  Store   Organizations: 

A  Study  of  Opportunities    for  Women.       Bulletin  Number  Five 

Careers  for  Women,  Catherine  Filene,  Editor,  Houghton  Mifflin 
Company  (1920),  is  a  recent  and  detailed  treatment  of  occupations 
for  women,  arranged  on  the  contributory  plan  with  nearly  two  hun- 
dred brief  articles  by  successful  women  who  are  engaged  in  the  vari- 
ous types  of  work  which  they  describe,  each  article  considering  the 
following  points :  description  of  occupation,  training  necessary,  op- 
portunity for  advancement,  financial  return,  qualifications  desirable, 
advantages  and  disadvantages,  and  followed  by  a  brief  list  of  sug- 
gested readings.  The  different  articles  of  necessity  vary  in  merit,  and 
there  are  both  overlappings  and  omissions.  But  the  book  contains 
a  range  of  information  not  to  be  found  elsewhere  and  valuable  lists 
and  addresses  of  professional  schools,  associations,  employers,  etc. 
The  Girl  and  the  Job,  by  Helen  C.  Hoerle  and  Florence  B.  Sals- 
berg,  Henry  Holt  and  Company  (1919),  is  written  by  teachers  in 
a  New  York  City  vocational  high  school  for  girls,  and  is  addressed 
to  high  school  rather  than  college  or  professional  school  graduates, 
although  it  describes  a  number  of  professional  occupations.  It  is 
based  on  interviews,  and  contains  lively,  if  not  always  carefully 
weighed,  information. 

Careers  After  the  War:  A  Guide  to  the  Professions  and  Occu- 
pations of  Educated  Women  and  Girls,  Women's  Employment  Pub- 
lishing Company,  Limited,  London  (Fifth  Edition.  No  date),  is 
made  up  of  articles  written  by  persons  in  different  occupations. 
While  not  limited  to  the  professions,  it  provides  a  useful  basis  of 
comparison  between  British  conditions  and  conditions  in  the  United 
States.  The  original  issue,  The  Fingcr-Post,  was  the  first  serious 
book  of  the  kind. 

Women's  Employment:  A  Paper  Dealing  with  Employment  Ques- 
tions as  they  Affect  Educated  Women,  is  issued  bi-monthly  by  the 
same  publishers,  and  is  now  (1920)  in  its  twentieth  volume. 

Occupations  for  Trained  Women  in  Canada,  by  Alice  Vincent 
Massey,  J.  M.  Dent  and  Company  (1920),  is  a  brief  but  well- 
organized  account,  written  with  a  knowledge  of  conditions  in  Great 
Britain  and  the  United  States  and  showing  the  lack  of  Cinadian 
facilities  for  training  and  employment  in  several  important  fields. 

Vocations  Open  to  College  Women,  Minneapolis  (no  date),  is 
a  pamphlet  issued  by  the  University  of  Minnesota.  It  contains  an 
especially  good  account  of  commercial  and  scientific  photography. 

Reports  of  the  annual  conferences  of  the  Intercollegiate  Voca- 
tion Guidance  Association,  an  organization  of  women  undcrgradu- 


450        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

ates,  giving  addresses  delivered  by  experts  in  various  occupational 
fields,  are  to  be  found  in  Education  and  the  Journal  of  Education, 
Boston,  Mass.,  under  dates  since  1917. 

Two  at  least  of  the  women's  colleges  have  issued  bulletins  deal- 
ing with  the  pre-professional  aspects  of  the  college  course;  and  a 
Committee  of  the  Association  of  Collegiate  Alumnae  is  preparing  a 
report  on  Pre-Professional  Requirements,  which  will  be  made  in 
April,  1921. 

Occupations  Towards  Which  Wellesley  Courses  May  Lead,  Wel- 
lesley,  Massachusetts  (1918). 

The  Relation  of  Vassar  Courses  to  Vocational  Opportunities, 
Bulletin  (1921). 

Special  studies  of  interest  to  educators  are: 

A  Comparative  Study  of  the  Curricula  of  Wellesley,  Smith,  and 
Vassar  Colleges,  by  Hermione  L.  Dealey.  Pedagogical  Seminary, 
September,  1915. 

College  Curricula  and  Interests  of  College  Women,  by  the  same 
author.  School  and  Society,  September  6,  1919. 

The  Curriculum  of  the  IVoman's  College  (based  on  a  study  of 
Vassar,  Wellesley,  Radclifife,  Barnard,  and  Mount  Holyoke  colleges) 
by  Mabel  L.  Robinson.  Bulletin  of  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Education 
1918.     Number  6. 

The  Adviser  of  Girls  in  a  High  School,  by  Romiett  Stevens 
Teachers  College  Record.     September,  1919. 

General  and  local  studies  of  women  in  particular  occu- 
pations are  increasing  in  number,  and  are  greatly  needed. 
Besides  the  four  bulletins  of  the  Bureau  of  Vocational  In- 
formation, on  women  in  statistical  work,  the  law,  chemistry, 
and  department  stores,  already  listed,  the  following  describe 
approximately  current  conditions.  They  vary  greatly  in 
thoroughness : 

Opportunities  for  Women  in  the  Municipal  Civil  Service  of  the 
City  of  New  York.  Intercollegiate  Bureau  of  Occupations,  New 
York  (1918).  To  be  procured  from  Bureau  of  Vocational  In- 
formation. 

Women  in  Government  Service,  by  Bertha  M.  Nienburg.  Women's 
Bureau,  U.  S.  Department  of  Labor,  Bulletin  Number  Eight  (1920). 

Women  in  Banking  in  the  City  of  Minneapolis.  Occupational 
Bulletin  Number  One.  Woman's  Occupational  Bureau  (1919).  Also 
leaflets  on  Home  Economics  Positions  in  Minneapolis,  The  Field  of 
Social  Work,  and  Opportunities  in  Journalism,  issued  by  the  Wo- 
man's Occupational  Bureau  (1920). 

Positions  in  Social  Work  in  Minneapolis.  Council  of  Social  Agen- 
cies. Bulletin  Number  One  (1919).  The  majority  of  workers 
dealt  with  are  women. 

Expenditures  and  Salaries  of  Case  Workers.  The  Family.  March 
^d  April,  1919. 


SELECTED  AND  ANNOTATED  READING  LIST  451 

Possibilities  in  Home  Economics  Work,  by  Melissa  F.  Snyder, 
Office  of  Home  Economics,  U.  S.  Department  of  Agriculture.  Jour- 
nal of  Home  Economics.     April,   1920. 

Women  Freacho's,  by  Mary  Sumner  Boyd  (a  study  based  on 
inquiries  sent  to  the  hundred  largest  denominations  in  the  United 
States).     The  Woman  Citizen.     December  18,   1920. 

Opportunities  for  Trained  Women  in  Cleveland  Factories.  Cleve- 
land Bureau  of  Occupations  for  Trained  Women  (Pamphlet,  1919). 

Executive  and  Technical  Women  in  Factories  in  and  about  New 
York  City.  Employment  Department,  Central  Branch  Young 
Women's  Christian   Association,   New   York    (Pamphlet,    1920). 

Opportunities  and  Salaries  of  JVomen  in  the  Teaching  Profession 
in  Nebraska.  Journal  of  Association  of  Collegiate  Alumnc-c. 
March-April,   1920. 

The  Bulletin  of  the  National  Committee  of  Bureaus  of  Occupa- 
tions Published  by  the  Bureau  of  Vocational  Information.  Ten 
Numbers.  November,  1919 — October,  1920.  This  bulletin  contains 
reports  from  the  fourteen  bureaus  of  occupations  throughout  the 
country  in  the  membership  of  the  National  Committee  and  other 
valuable  information. 

A  group  of  recent  publications  deal  with  store  occupa- 
tions for  women. 

Department  Store  Education,  by  Helen  R.  Norton.  Bulletin 
U.  S.  Bureau  of  Education,  Number  9,  1917. 

A  Text-Book  on  Retail  Selling,  by  the  same  author.  Ginn  and 
Company   (1019). 

Retail  Selling,  by  Mrs.  Lucinda  W.  Prince.  Bulletin  Number 
22.     Federal  Board  for  Vocational  Education   (1919). 

The  Educational  Director,  by  Beulah  E.  Kennard.  The  Ronald 
Press  Company  (1918). 

Positions  of  Responsibility  in  Department  Store  Ornanicatinns: 
A  Study  of  Opportunities  for  Women.  Bureau  of  Vocational  In- 
formation.    Bulletin  Number  Five  (1921). 

Training  for  Store  Service,  by  Lucilc  Eaves.  Richard  G.  Badger 
(1920).  Studies  in  Economic  Relations  of  Women.  Women's 
Educational  and  Industrial  Union. 

Two  local  and  special  bulletins  listing  opportunities  for 
training  give  information  of  more  than  temporary  value : 

Opportunities  for  ]Var-Time  Training  for  Women  in  Nc7V  York 
City.  1918-191Q.  Compiled  by  the  Intercollegiate  Bureau  of  Occu- 
pations and  published  by  the  Clearing  House  for  War-Time  Train- 
inpr  for  Women  (1918).  To  be  procured  from  Bureau  of  Vocational 
Information. 

Art  Education:  An  Investigation  of  the  Training  Available  in 
New  York  City  for  Artists  and  Artisans.  Compiled  by  Florence 
Levy. 


452       WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

Older  publications  on  women  and  professional  occupa- 
tions are  as  follows: 

Vocations  for  the  Trained  Woman.  Parts  One,  Two,  Three 
Studies  in  Economic  Relations  of  Women.  Volume  One.  Women's 
Educational  and  Industrial  Union.  Boston. 

Part  I  (1910),  edited  by  Agnes  F.  Perkins,  contains  articles 
on  various  occupations  by  experts  in  these  fields.  It  is  out  of 
print. 

Part  2  (1914)  contains  studies  of  opportunities  for  women  in 
agriculture,  social  service,  secretarial  service,  and  real  estate,  in 
Massachusetts  and  Boston,  by  Eleanor  Martin  and  Margaret  A. 
Post. 

Part  3  (1916)  contains  Opportunities  for  Women  in  Domestic 
Science,  by  Marie  Francke,  published  as  Bulletin  Two  of  the 
Association  of  Collegiate  Alumnae. 

Women  and  Work,  by  Helen  M.  Bennett,  Manager  of  the  Chi- 
cago Collegiate  Bureau  of  Occupations,  D.  Appleton  and  Company 
(1917),  is  general  but  suggestive. 

The  Dean  of  Women,  by  Lois  Kimball  Matthews,  Houghton 
Mifflin  Company  (1916),  discusses  the  administration  of  vocational 
and  other  activities  for  women  in  a  coeducational  university. 

The  Ambitions  Woman  in  Business,  bv  Eleanor  Gilbert,  Funk  and 
Wagnalls  Company  (1916),  is  still  probably  the  best  single  treatment 
of  women  in  commercial  occupations.  Its  chapters  on  women  in 
advertising,  women  in  wholesale  or  outside  selling,  and  women  as 
business  executives  are  particularly  useful.  But  there  have  been 
many  developments  since  the  book  was  written. 

Publications  of  the  Association  of  Collegiate  Alumnae 
(established  1882)  contain  many  reports  and  articles  on 
occupations  for  college  women ;  especially  the  Journal  of 
the  Association,  begun  in  1907.  To  be  noted  are  a  report 
on  Economic  Efficiency  of  College  Women,  by  Susan  M. 
Kingsbury,  February,  1910;  Vocational  Number,  April, 
1913;  A  Census  of  College  Women,  by  Mary  Van  Kleeck, 
May,  1918 ;  and  Reports  of  the  Committee  on  Vocational 
Opportunities  other  than  Teaching  from  1910  on.  The  As- 
sociation has  issued  two  vocational  bulletins : 

Bulletin  Number  One.  Vocational  Training:  A  Classified  List 
of  Institutions  Training  Educated  Women  for  Occupations  Other 
than  Teaching.  Compiled  by  Elizabeth  Kemper  Adams  (1913).  A 
revised  edition  is  planned. 


SELECTED  AND  ANNOTATED  READING  LIST  453 

Bulletin  Number  Two.  Opportunities  for  Women  in  Domestic 
Science,  by  Marie  Francke  (1916).  Published  as  Part  Three  of 
Vocations  for  the  Trained  Woman.  Women's  Educational  and 
Industrial  Union. 

Alumnae  quarterlies  and  other  alumnae  publications  of 
the  women's  colleges  and  the  publications  of  women's  Greek- 
letter  societies  in  coeducational  institutions  frequently  and 
increasingly  contain  articles  on  the  occupations  and  occu- 
pational opportunities  of  women  college  and  university 
graduates. 

Attention  may  be  called  to  certain  recent  publications 
dealing  with  teaching,  nursing,  and  social  work,  the  three 
chief  professions  in  which  women  workers  predominate. 

(i)  Teaching. 

The  Professional  Preparation  of  Teachers  for  American  Public 
Schools,  Based  upon  an  Examination  of  Tax-Supported  Normal 
Schools  in  the  State  of  Missouri,  Carnegie  Foundation  for  the  Ad- 
vancement of  Teaching,  Bulletin  Number  Fourteen,  1920,  urges 
that  normal  schools  be  made  a  constituent  part  of  the  state  uni- 
versity system,  like  other  professional  schools,  and  that  profession- 
ally trained  women  teachers  continue  teaching  after  marriage.  It 
also  discusses  the  relations  of  men  to  teaching  and  school  admin- 
istration. 

The  Nation  and  the  Schools,  by  John  A.  H.  Keith  and  William 
C.  Bagley.     Macmillan  Company  (1921). 

(2)   Nursing. 

The  Rockefeller  Foundation  is  making  an  exhaustive 
study  of  nursing  education ;  and  books  on  public  health 
nursing  and  its  special  phases  are  multiplying,  such  as 

Public  Health  Nursing,  by  Mary  S.  Gardner.  Macmillan  Com- 
pany  (1916). 

Organization  of  Public  Health  Nursing,  by  Annie  M.  Brainard. 
Macmillan  Company  (1919). 

The  School  Nurse,  by  Lina  R.  Struthers.     G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

(1917)- 

The  Tuberculosis  Nurse,  by  Ellen  M.  LaMotte.  G.  P.  Putnam  s 
Sons  (1915). 

Industrial  Nursing,  by  Florence  S.  Wright.  Macmillaa  Com- 
pany (1919). 


454        WOMEN  PROFESSIONAL  WORKERS 

Reports,  pamphlets,  and  other  periodical  literature,  may 
be  procured  through  the  National  Organization  for  Public 
Health  Nursing. 

(3)     Social  Work. 

The  Russell  Sage  Foundation  is  undertaking  a  study  of 
education  and  training  for  social  work. 

The  Scientific  Spirit  and  Social  Work,  by  Arthur  James  Todd, 
Macmillan  Company  (1919),  is  overweighted  with  philosophical 
generahzation,  but  emphasizes  the  professional  attitude.  Chapter 
VII  on  the  Labor  Turnover  in  Social  Agencies  is  especially  valuable. 

Field  Work  and  Social  Research,  by  Stuart  F.  Chapin.  Century 
Company  (1920). 

Social  Service  and  the  Art  of  Healing,  by  Richard  C  Cabot, 
M.  D.,  Moffat,  Yard  and  Company  (1909),  discusses  informally 
but  suggestively  the  professional  character  of  social  work,  espe- 
cially in  its  relations  to  medicine. 

Social  Work:  Essays  on  the  Meeting  Ground  of  Doctor  and 
Social  Worker,  by  the  same  author,  Houghton  Mifflin  Company 
(1919),  deals  somewhat  fully  with  the  medical  social  worker  and 
her  duties. 

Dispensaries:  Their  Management  and  Development,  by  Michael 
M.  Davis  and  Andrew  R.  Warner,  M.  D.,  Macmillan  Company, 
(1918),  presents  fresh  and  valuable  points  of  view. 

Social  Diagnosis,  by  Mary  E.  Richmond,  Russell  Sage  Foundation 
(1917),  is  an  authoritative  presentation  of  the  established  methods 
and  techniques  of  social  case  work. 

The  Social  Case  History,  by  Ada  E.  Sheffield  (1920),  is  a  more 
limited  study  under  the  same  auspices. 

Other  Russell  Sage  Publications  of  special  interest  are :  The 
Delinquent  Child  and  the  Home,  by  S.  P.  Breckenridge  and  E.  Ab- 
bott (1916)  ;  Social  Work  in  Hospitals,  by  Ida  B.  Cannon  (1913)  ; 
Broken  Homes,  by  Joanna  C.  Colcord  (1919);  Household  Admin- 
istration, by  Florence  Nesbitt  (1918)  ;  The  Neglected  Girl,  by 
Ruth  S.  True   (1914). 

The  Individual  Delinquent  (1915),  and  Mental  Conflicts  and 
Misconduct  (1917),  by  William  Healy,  M,  D.,  Little,  Brown  and 
Company,  are  by  the  foremost  authority  in  this  field. 

Among  journals  in  this  field  are  The  Survey,  The  Family,  The 
Hospital  Social  Service  Quarterly.  Mental  Hygiene  frequently 
contains  articles  of  social  value. 

For  articles  on  psychiatric  social  work,  see  Mental  Hygiene,  espe- 
cially The  Training  School  of  Psychiatric  Social  Work  at  Smith 
College,  by  W.  A.  Neilson  et  al,  October,  1918;  The  Psychiatric 
Thread  Running  Through  All  Social  Case  Work,  by  Mary  C.  Jar- 
rett,    April,    1919;    Special  Preparation   of   the   Psychiatric   Social 


' 


SELECTED  AND  ANNOTATED  READING  LIST  455 

Worker,    by    Bernard    Glueck,    M.    D.,    and    Qualifications    of    the 
Psychiatric  Social  Worker,  by  Jessie  Taft,  July,  1919. 

IV.  GOVERNMENT  PUBLICATIONS,  REPORTS  OF  PROFESSIONAL 
ASSOCIATIONS,  FOUNDATIONS,  ETC.,  BULLETINS  OF  IN- 
STITUTIONS, PROFESSIONAL  AND  OCCUPATIONAL  PE- 
RIODICALS. 

Bulletins  of  the  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Education,  the  Federal  Board  for 
Vocational  Education,  the  States  Relations  Service  of  the  Depart- 
ment of  Agriculture,  the  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics,  the  Women's 
Bureau,  and  the  Children's  Bureau  of  the  Department  of  Labor ; 
the  Department  of  Commerce,  frequently  contain  important  voca- 
tional material.  Many  of  these  agencies  also  issue  periodicals,  such 
as  School  Life,  The  Vocational  Summary,  and  Monthly  Labor  Re- 
view. 

Reports  of  organizations  like  the  Council  on  Medical  Education 
of  the  American  Medical  Association,  the  Council  on  Legal  Educa- 
tion of  the  American  Bar  Association,  the  Society  for  the  Promo- 
tion of  Engineering  Education ;  the  Educational  Committee  of  the 
Technology  Clubs  Associated,  the  Associations  of  Collegiate  Schools 
of  Architecture  and  of  Business,  the  Association  of  American 
Library  Schools,  the  Association  of  Training  Schools  of  Pro- 
fessional Social  Work ;  reports  of  the  Carnegie  Foundation  for  the 
Advancement  of  Teaching,  and  other  great  foundations,  the  Amer- 
ican Council  on  Education,  the  National  Education  Association, 
the  American  Association  of  University  Professors,  the  National 
Society  for  Vocational  Education,  the  National  Vocational  Guidance 
Association,  and  numerous  others,  are  rich  in  material. 

Among  periodicals  devoted  to  professions  and  occupations  may 
be  mentioned  Administration :  the  Journal  of  Business  Analysis 
and  Control ;  American  Physical  Education  Review ;  Factory ;  The 
Family;  Filing;  Hospital  Social  Service  Quarterly;  Industrial  Man- 
agement; Journal  of  Home  Economics;  Journal  of  Industrial  and 
Engineering  Chemistry;  Journal  of  Industrial  Medicine;  Lil)rary 
Journal;  Mental  Hygiene;  Personnel;  Playground;  Printers'  Ink; 
Public  Health  Nurse;  School  and  Society;  Special  Libraries;  Tlio 
Survey;  System. 


I 


INDEX 


Accountancy  and  accountants. 
208,  236-238. 

Acting  and  actors,  314-315;  pro- 
fessional character  of,  314. 

Adult  education,  25,  138,  146, 
220. 

Advertising  and  workers  in, 
280-281,  301-306;  distinguished 
from  publicity,  281 ;  social  and 
ethical  standards  of,  282,  301  ; 
types,  training,  salaries,  com- 
ments, 301-306. 

Agents,  home  demonstration. 
105-109;  federal,  132,  218;  in 
social  work,  176,  182-183 ;  in- 
surance, 268-269;  real  estate, 
277 ;  advertising,  302. 

Agriculture  and  workers  in,  re- 
lations to  marketing  and  home 
economics,  103 ;  States  Rela- 
tions Service  of  U.  S.  Depart- 
ment and  state  agricultural 
colleges ;  Federal  Board  for 
Vocational  Education,  work 
of,  104-109;  types,  training, 
incomes  and  salaries,  com- 
ments, 109-115. 

American  City  Bureau,  civic 
work  through  chambers  of 
commerce,  138,  140-142. 

American  Council  on  Education, 
30,  45,  415. 

American  Red  Cross,  program 
for  health  centers,  84;  nurs- 
ing service  and  rural  health 
program,  86;  psychiatric  social 
workers  and,  97 ;  Home  Serv- 
ice of,  161,  183;  salaries  in, 
182. 


Americanization  work  and  work- 
ers, through  recreation  work, 
102;  through  home  demonstra- 
tion agents,  106-107;  through 
teaching,  375,  381,  382;  a  com- 
munity problem,  138,  141,  147- 
149;  what  it  involves,  147- 
149,  189. 

Ana'sthctists,  64,  341. 

Appointment  bureaus,  stages  in 
history  of,  412-414;  functions 
and  possible  development  into 
bureaus  of  professional  rela- 
tions, 420-422;  relations  to 
other  college  vocational  ac- 
tivities, 424-425. 

Apprentices,  professional,  7,  8, 
34,  41,  61,  97,  106,  145,  170-171, 
176-177,  186,  191,  207,  208-209, 
213-214,  234,  263-264,  286,  361. 
434-4.^6. 

Arcliitecturc  and  architects,  145. 
318-319;  landscape,  319. 

Art  and  artists,  308-324;  psy- 
chological and  social  character 
of,  309-310,  311-312;  literature 
and  civic  drama,  310-313;  act- 
ing and  commercial  drama, 
313-314;  art  and  moticm 
pictures,  315-316;  training 
and  salaried  positions.  317; 
music,  317-318;  architecture. 
318-319;  interior  decorating, 
319-321  ;  mural  painting  and 
illustrating,  321-^22;  industrial 
designing.  ^,22-323 ;  handi- 
crafts. 323-324. 

Association  of  Collegiate  Alum- 
nae, 23,  26.  30,  398.  403.  +26. 


457 


458 


INDEX 


Associations,  28-30,  441. 
Astronomical    work   and   work- 
ers, 335-336. 
Auditors.    See  Accountancy. 

Bacteriologists,  60,  67,  68,  70, 
329,  332,  333,  340-341- 

Banking  and  bank  workers,  254- 
266;  position  of  women  in,  not 
yet  assured,  254-255 ;  nature 
of  modern,  255-258;  types  of, 
258-260;  bond  and  investment 
houses,  260-263;  training,  sal- 
aries, comments,  263-266. 

Boards,  professional  women  on, 
30,  136-137,  218.  _ 

Bond  and  securities  salesmen. 
See  Banking. 

Book  publishing.  See  Publish- 
ing. 

Book  selling,  298-299. 

Botany,     work    in,    48-49,     105, 

IIS,  338-339,  341. 

Budget  and  thrift  workers,  104, 
117,  118-119,  121,  122;  budgets, 
59,  180,  382. 

Bureaus  of  municipal  and  gov- 
ernmental research,  142-143 ; 
of  industrial  and  commercial 
research,  216-217,  240,  249;  of 
occupations,  31,  179,  397-406; 
of  vocational  guidance  and  in- 
formation, 389,  425. 

Bureau  of  Vocational  Informa- 
tion, 328,  353,  389,  402. 

Business.  See  Industrial  and 
commercial  services. 

Business  librarians.  See  Li- 
brarians. 

Buyers,  128-129,  250-252,  261, 
367. 

Case  work  and  case  workers, 
159-164,  176-177,  183;  com- 
pared with  mass  work,  15^ 
160;  enlarged  conception  of, 
161-163. 

Census  of  1910,  professional 
classification  in,  21-23 ;  teach- 


ers in,  392;  of  women  physi- 
cians, 64;  of  college  women, 
23,  392,  399,  403. 

Chambers  of  commerce,  com- 
munity and  civic  work  of,  140- 
141 ;  and  women,  141-142. 

Chemistry  and  chemists,  213, 
326-332,  339;  over-suply  of, 
327;  value  of  graduate  work 
Jn,  327-328. 

Child  hygiene.  See  Public 
health. 

Children's  Bureau,  U.  S.,  66,  84, 
103,  120-121,   178,  218,  389. 

Civil  service,  federal,  46,  47,  48, 
49,  151-153;  specifications  pro- 
posed for,  52-58,  335-336,  3S.I- 
353 ;  position  of  women  in, 
153-155 ;  civil  service,  state 
and  municipal,  47-52,  153-154; 
salaries  in,  155,  338-340. 

Civic  work  and  workers,  133- 
134,  135,  141-142. 

Classification  of  Personnel, 
Army  Committee  of,  37-44; 
specifications  of,  37-40;  Scott 
Rating  Scale,  41-43. 

Clerical  work  and  workers,  224- 
227,  231-232,  233-235;  profes- 
sional workers  and,  7-8,  224- 
225,  227,  231-232,  233-235,  242- 

244,  437. 

Clinical  psychology.  See  Psy- 
chology. 

Clinics,  68,  84,  103,  120,  344,  347. 

College  women,  professional 
status  of,  8,  233,  377;  census 
of,  23,  399,  403 ;  increasing 
numbers  of,  25 ;  fellowship 
for,  26-27;  employers'  discov- 
ery and  opinion  of,  24-25,  168- 
169,  203-206,  211,  213-216,  224, 
233,  250-251,  254,  264,  297-298, 
325-326,  435-436,  439-440;  and 
clerical  and  industrial  women, 
27-28,  186,  193,  194-199,  213- 
214,  220,  224,_  234-235,  243-244, 
435-436;  initial  occupations  of, 
266,  272,  275,  305,  331-332,  399- 


INDEX 


459 


400;  as  prospective  workers, 
425-428,  430-432. 

Colleges  and  universities,  co- 
operation with  industries,  com- 
merce, and  government,  15, 
25,  45-46,  325-326,  386,  394, 
410-41 1,  4147418,  435-436; 
crowded  condition  of,  25 ;  re- 
lations with  workers,  27-28, 
146,  213-214,  220;  new  spirit 
in,  416;  relations  with  profes- 
sions, 384,  386,  417-418. 

Colleges  of  liberal  arts,  410^ 
429;  relations  to  professions 
and  professional  training, 
46,  374,  384-385.  410-412,  418- 
419,  428-429;  pre-professional 
character  of,  169,  412,  418, 
426,  429;  appointment  bureaus 
in,  412-414,  419-421 ;  voca- 
tional conferences  in,  422-423 ; 
vocational  advisers  and 
guidance  in,  423-425 ;  voca- 
tional publications  of,  426- 
428;  diflficulties  of  providing 
vocational  information  in,  428; 
place  in  a  system  of  profes- 
sional relations,  428-429. 

Comments,  of  employers  in  so- 
cial work,  168-169;  industry, 
203-206,  210-21 1 ;  mercantile 
work,  250-251;  banking,  264; 
insurance,  270-271 ;  public 
utilities,  272-274,  439-440; 
journalism  and  publishing, 
297-298;  chemistry,  326-327; 
of  women  workers  in  medi- 
cine, 70;  law,  76-78;  ministry, 
81-82;  nursing,  93-94;  hos- 
pital social  work,  98-99;  com- 
munity and  civic  work,  131- 
132;  social  work,  169,  184; 
personnel  work,  194-197;  in- 
dustrial work,  221-222;  of- 
fice work,  233-234,  245- 
247;  department  store  work, 
252;  banking,  261-262,  265- 
266;  insurance,  271-272;  pub- 
lic     utilities,      274-275;      real 


estate,  277;  journalism,  290- 
291 ;  magazine  editing,  294- 
295;  advertising,  305-306;  play 
producing  and  directing,  315; 
sciences  and  technologies,  330- 
331,  333-334;  psychology,  349- 
350;  statistics,  354-355;  library 
work,  365-366;  museum  work, 
370-372. 

Commercial  work  and  workers, 
223-278;  comparison  with  in- 
dustrial, 223-226;  types  of, 
office,  mercantile,  and  spe- 
cialized, 223,  224;  psychology 
of  office  work,  226;  men  and 
women  and  stenography,  226- 
227;  secretaries  distinguished 
from  stenographers,  227-231, 
234;  are  secretaries  profes- 
sional workers?  228-231;  cor- 
respondents, 232-233;  com- 
mercial apprenticeship,  234; 
office  management,  235-236; 
accountancy,  236-238 ;  filing 
and  busines  librarianship,  238- 
239;  research,  240;  training 
and  schools,  240-242 ;  salaries 
and  comments,  243-247 ;  train- 
ing schools  of  retail  selling, 
249;  research  in,  249;  types  of 
work  in,  salaries,  and  conir 
ments,  250-253 ;  specialized 
commercial  work,  254-278.  See 
Ranking,  Insurance,  Public 
Utilities,  Real  Estate. 

Community  drama.    See  Drama. 

Community    Service,    Inc.,    13^ 

139- 
Community  work  and  workers, 
relations  to  social  work.  133- 
134,  156,  160,  165;  activity  of 
women  in,  135;  political  pros- 
pects of  women,  135-137; 
community  agencies,  138-142; 
surveys,  142-143;  housing, 144- 
145;  uses  of  leisure  time,  146- 
147;  "Americanization,"  147- 
149;  employment,  149-150;  sal- 
aries   and    comments,    150-151. 


46o 


INDEX 


Computing  and  computers,  332- 
333;  astronomical,  335-336. 

Consultants,  9,  10,  32,  43,  67,  113, 
115,  119,  120,  121-123,  126,  130] 
1.6s,  193,  194,  197,  307,  442. 

Cooperative  movement,  104,  iir, 
118,   129,  220-221,  253. 

Correspondents,  203,  232-233. 

Curators,  in  museums,  367,  369 
370,  371. 

Deans,  421,  422,  424,  427;  of 
women,  390. 

Delinquents,  work  and  workers 
with,  65,  66,  67,  70,  74,  97,  102. 

Democracy,  in  occupations,  r,  5, 
6-7,  13,  84-85,  107,  121-122, 
134.  138,  139-140,  142,  146,  152- 
153,  156-157,  158,  165,  174,  185, 

188-189,  198,  201-202,  211-212, 
213-214,  220,  225-226,  235,  292! 
300,  310,  3II-312,  356,  357,  362, 

373-374,  375-376,  377-379,  382, 
384,  406,  416-418,  440-441. 

Dentistry  and  dentists,  68,  70. 

Design,  arts  of,  and  designers 
309,  311-313,  317,  319-324.  See 
Art  and  artists. 

Dietetics  and  dietitians,  118,  120, 
121,  123-124,  326.  See  Nutri- 
tion and  nutrition  workers. 

Descents,  in  museums,  367,  369. 

Drafting  and  draftsmen,  213, 
242,  318,  332,  336-37,  340,  356. 

Urama  and  dramatic  workers, 
309,  311 ;  community  and  civic, 
312-313;  commercial,  313—315; 
motion  pictures,  299-300,  315- 
316.     See  Art  and   artists. 

Editorial  work  and  editors,  291- 
295-    See  Journalism. 

Educational  functions  of  pro- 
fessions, 6-7,  1 1-12,  375,  417; 
administration,  136-137,  389- 
390;  directors  in  retail  stores, 
248-249,  250-251;  research, 
390-392. 

Educational  directors,  176,  417- 
418;  in  industries,  203,  209;  in 


retail  stores,  248-249,  250-251 ; 
in     commercial     corporations' 
241-242,  272-274. 
Education,  effect  of  war  on,  24- 
25,  373,^  399,  414-418;    funda- 
mental importance  of,  373-375, 
382,  384;  proposed  federal  de- 
partment of.  382-383 ;  graduate 
schools  of,  384;  undergraduate 
departments  of,  384-385  ;  U  S 
Bureau  of,  388,  390-391,  394; 
relations    of    liberal   and   pro- 
fessional, 45-46,  410-412,  417- 
419;  as  a  process,  374,  416,  418 
419.  ' 

Employers,  and  the  colleges,  15, 
45-46,    417,    429;    associations 
of,  201.    See  Comments. 
Employment   agencies,   commer- 
cial,   264,    394-395,    404,    408; 
community  studies  of,  needed 
130. 
Employment     bureaus,     profes- 
sional,  164,   179,  396,  397-398, 
408-409. 
Employment   management.     See 

Personnel  work. 
Employment,  modes  of  securing, 
393-409,  442 ;  in  law,  75 ;  nurs- 
ing,  92;    home   demonstration 
work,  105-106;  home  econom- 
ics, 130;  social  work,  179;  per- 
sonnel work,  192;  commercial         _ 
work,     242-243;      journalism,         # 
291;   chemistry,  331;   sciences, 
343. 
Employment      service,      nation- 
wide professional;  need  of  in         i 
system    of    professional    rela-         f 
tions,  406,  414;  relation  of  col- 
lege  appointment   bureaus   to, 
413,  419;   requirements   for  a, 
407-408;    conference    on,     -^i. 
408.  '^  ' 

Employment  service,  nation- 
wide public,  a  community 
problem,  138,  149-150;  work  in, 
a  coming  profession  compar- 
able to  teaching,  150,  198-199; 


I 


INDEX 


461 


professional  service  as  part  of, 
406. 

Employment  Service,  U.  S. 
War-Emergency,  clasification 
of  professional  workers,  7-8: 
professional  section  of,  3f, 
393;  brief  existence  of,  149; 
range  and  purpose  of,  198; 
training  course  in,  199;  and 
bureaus   of   occupations,  405. 

Engineering  and  workers  in, 
213,  326.  332,  333-334,  338-340- 
341-343. 

Eugenics  and  eugenics  workers, 

97.  347- 
Exhibits    and    exhibit    workers, 
143,   164,   178,  374.     See   Sur- 
veys. 


Farming  and  farmers,  109-112; 
opportunities  and  difficulties 
of  women  in,  109;  social  obli- 
gations, III;  cooperative  pos- 
sibilities, III.  Eee  Agricul- 
ture. 

Farm  management  and  man- 
agers, 113-115.  See  Agricul- 
ture. 

Federation  of  Business  and  Pro- 
fessional Women's  Clubs,  Na- 
tional, 30-31,  235-236,  408-409. 

Fees,   121-122,  394-395.  404.  408. 

Fellowships  and  scholarships, 
25-26;  in  social  work,  171- 
172,  176;  industrial  research, 
216;.  journalism,  288;  art  and 
music,  316-317;  science,  340- 
342;  Sidgwick,  384. 

Field  work.    See  Practice  work. 

Filing  and  filing  experts,  dis- 
tinguished from  librarians, 
238-239,  247,  265,  360-361. 

Food  and  living  services,  103- 
104,  117. 

Foreign  correspondents.  See 
Correspondents. 

Foreign  trade,  and  workers  in, 
128,  232-233,  242,  256-257,  366. 


Gardening  and  gardeners,  school, 
community,  consulting,  land- 
scape, 112-113,  319. 

General  intelligence  tests.  See 
Tests. 

Geology  and  geologists,  pro- 
posed federal  specifications, 
52-58;  other  opportunities, 
336-338.  339,  340. 

Government  services.  See  Civil 
Service  and  political  work. 

Grades  of  worker.  34,  36,  41,  44. 
47-48.  60-61.  338;  in  special 
occupations,  170,  175-176,  207. 
208-209,  234,  361-362,  367,  435- 
436. 

Graphics,  178,  351.  See  Statis- 
tical work. 

Group  practice,  6,  32,  62,  84-85. 

Gymnastics,  teaching  of.  See 
Physical  education. 

Health.  See  Medicine  and  Pub- 
lic health. 

Health  centers,  84-85,  121,  124, 
162. 

Home  and  school  visitors.  See 
Visiting  teachers. 

Home  demonstration  work  and 
workers,  105-109;  relations  to 
agriculture  and  home  econom- 
ics, 106-107,  120 ;  to  other  work- 
ers, 107,  120;  types,  105,  107; 
requirements,  106-107;  sal- 
aries, comments,  107-108.  See 
Agriculture,  Department  of. 

Home  economics  work  and 
workers,  105-109,  118-T32; 
need  of  new  name  and  train- 
ing, 118-119;  types.  118-119; 
research,  123,  129-130;  salaries 
and  comments,  130^132.  208. 

Horticulture.  112-113,  319,  338, 
339.  341- 

Hospital  social  work  and  work- 
ers, 94-99;  proposed  hospital 
social    service    dietitian,    121. 

House  organs,  203.  212,  292.  See 
Editorial  work. 


462 


INDEX 


Housing  and  workers  in,  123, 
137-138,  143-145,  276-278. 

Illustrating  and  illustrators,  309, 
321-322. 

Independent  business,  women  in, 
only  incidentally  treated,  253 ; 
in  farming,  109-112;  home 
economics,  128;  insurance, 
271-272;  real  estate,  277-278; 
advertising,  302-303 ;  interior 
decorating,  319-320;  arts  and 
crafts,  324. 

Independent  practice,  rather 
than  "private,"  9,  62,  65,  441- 
442;  versus  salaried,  9-10,  13. 
See   Consultants. 

Industrial  art,  317,  322-324.  See 
Art.  _ 

Industrial  hygiene  and  hygien- 
ists,  65,  66-67,  70,  84,  91,  92- 
94,  97,  101-102,  212-213. 

Industrial  work  and  workers, 
industrial  management  as  a 
profession,  12-13,  14-1S,  202; 
new  relations  of  industries 
and  colleges,  15,  25,  27-28,  45- 
46,  146,  220,  325-326,  386,  394, 
410-411,  416-418;  personnel 
work  in,  185-197;  other  types 
of,  201 ;  professional  women 
in,  136-137,  202-203,  206-208, 
210^212,  218-219;  discovery  of 
college  women  by  industrial 
employers,  203-206,  210-21 1, 
213-216;  college  women  in  in- 
dustry, 194-199,  208-210,  221- 
222;  training  for,  191-192,  208, 
211,  213-214,  216-217,  435-436; 
salaries,  192-193,  194,  209,  218, 
221. 

Information  services  and  bur- 
eaus, 65,  279,  282-283,  359. 

Institute  of  International  Educa- 
tion, 26,  384. 

Institutional  management  and 
managers,  122-123,  '^27. 

Insurance  and  workers  in,  254, 
266-272 ;   nature   of,   266-267 ; 


types,  267-269;  women  in, 
269-270 ;  training,  salaries, 
and  Qomments,  270-272. 

Intercollegiate  Bureau  of  Oc- 
cupations, 398,  402. 

Intercollegiate  Community  Serv- 
ice  Association,   26,   171,    172, 

179; 

Interior  decorating  and  decora- 
tors, 319-321 ;  a  profession  in 
the  making,  320,  321. 

"Interneships,"  importance  of, 
64,  89,  176,  361. 

Inter-Professional  Conference, 
6-7,  10,  30,  44-45. 

Investigators,  distinguished  from 
research  workers,  178,  218-220, 
240. 

Job  analysis,  36,  179,  188,  190, 
407. 

Journalism  and  journalists,  208- 
210,  279-281,  283-291 ;  distin- 
guished from  publishing  and 
publicity,  283 ;  nature  of,  283— 
286;  the  country  newspaper, 
286-287 ;  training,  salaries, 
comments,  287-291. 

Laboratory  work  and  workers, 
medical  training  and,  67,  340- 
341 ;  effect  of  war  on  employ- 
ment of  women  in,  325-326, 
328 ;  advanced  training  neces- 
sary for  professional  stand- 
ing, 227-22S,  341-342;  types 
328,  2>32,  335-341,  343;  salaries 
and  comments,  2^2^32'^,  333- 
334,  335.  338-341. 

"Labor  turnover"  in  professions, 
176,  179,  380;  of  women  versus 
men,  18,  33-34,  203-206,  233, 
250,  273-274,  297-298. 

Landscape  architecture.  See 
Architecture. 

Law  and  lawyers,  62-63,  71-78; 
less  socialized  than  medicine, 
71;  training  for,  71-73,  75; 
types,    75;     opportunities    for 


INDEX 


463 


women,  73-75;  salaries  and 
comments,  75-77. 

Leaves  of  absence,  16,  385-386. 

Leisure  time,  uses  of,  138,  145- 
147,  220,  310.  See  Adult  edu- 
cation. 

Liberal  and  vocational  educa- 
tion. See  Colleges  of  Liberal 
Arts. 

Library  work  and  librarians, 
356-366;  distinguished  from 
filing,  238-239,  360^361 ;  effect 
of  war  on,  357;  types,  357- 
360;  grades,  49-52,  361-362, 
364;  salaries  and  comments, 
363-365. 

Literary  work  and  workers, 
literature  an  art  not  journal- 
ism, 279-280,  284,  296,  309, 
310-311. 

Magazine  work  and  workers, 
284-285,  291-295. 

Mail-order  houses,  204,  252,  253, 
341. 

Map  making.    See  Drafting. 

Marriage  and  professional 
women,  18,  31-33,  203-206,  233, 
250,  273-274,  297-298,  350,  381, 
438,  442. 

Mathematics,  professional  uses 
of,  211,  236-238,  242,  264,  267, 
331-340,  34T,  353. 

Mechanical  drawing.  See  Draft- 
ing. 

Medical   social   work,  94-96. 

Medicine  and  medical  workers, 
62-71,  83-85^  90,  97,  102,  212- 
213;^  social  ideas  in,  6.  62,  65, 
6y\  improved  standards  in,  63, 
65 ;  opportunities  for  women 
in,  64-68;  training,  68-69; 
salaries  and  comments,  69-71  ; 
nursing  and,  86-92;  hospital 
social  work  and,  94-99,  121. 

Men  and  women  in  professions, 
18-23,  24,  25,  27,  28-35,  63-64, 
68,  71-72,  76,  78-79,  81-S2,  106, 
109,  135-137,  153-155.  170-171. 


173-174,  180-181,  186,  191,  193, 
199,  203-206,  217,  226-227,  22:^, 
233,  238,  253,  254-255,  257,  261, 
262-263,  270-271,  272-275,  277- 
278,  284-285,  286-287,  291,  294- 
295.  297,  300,  301,  305-306,  308, 
316,  318,  325,  326-327,  328,  330- 
331,  334.  337,  341.  342.  350,  354- 
355.  367,  390.  392.  393,  399-401, 
404,  405,  406,  410,  414,  420,  431, 
432,  435,  438-439,  440,  441,  442. 

Mental  hospitals,  workers  in,  66, 
67,  70-71,  94-95,  97,  99-100, 
346.  347.  358-359. 

Mental  hygiene  and  workers  in, 
16-17,  65-66,  67,  70,  83,  84,  85, 
89.  91,  94-95,  96--99,  100,  102, 
158-159,  162,  163,  164,  190,  212, 
225-226,  343-344.  344-347,  387 ; 
National  Committee  for  Men- 
tal Hygiene,  67,  83,  96,  97,  99, 
415. 

Mental  tests.     See  Tests. 

Mercantile  work  and  workers, 
223-224,  232-233,  247-253,  260- 
263,  268-269. 

Ministry  and  work  in,  62,  63, 
78-82. 

Missionary  work  and  workers, 
797^0. 

Motion-picture  work  and  work- 
ers, 279,  292,  299-300,  3".  315- 

316.  See  Advertising  and  Art. 
Museum     work     and     workers, 

317.  333,  341.  356.  366-372. 
Music,    work   in,   311,   316,   317- 

318.  See  Art. 

National  Committee  of  Bureaus 
of  Occupations,  31,  398,  402, 
403.  405.  408. 

National  Committee  for  Mental 
Hygiene,  67,  83,  96,  97,  99, 
^415. 

National  Federation  of  Business 
and  Professional  Women's 
Clubs,  30-31,  235-236,  408-^09. 

National  Research  Council,  26, 
415-416. 


464 


INDEX 


National  Social  Unit  Organiza- 
tion, 84,  138,  139-140. 

National  Social  Workers'  Ex- 
change, 164,  179,  396,  408. 

Newer  occupations,  profes- 
sional status  of,  I,  4,  14- 
15,  65,  73-74,  81,  83-84,  89-90, 
91,  94-102,  104,  106-107,  112, 
117-119,  120,  121,  122,  123,  124, 
127,  128-129,  130,  134,  135, 
137,  141,  142-143,  145,  147,  149- 
150,  178,  185-186,  190,  202-203, 
206-209,  218-220,  235,  236,  249, 
254,  260,  269,  272,  276,  277,  281, 
295-296,  299-300,  303,  328,  332, 
336-337,  375-376,  387,  389. 

Newspaper  work  and  workers. 
See  Journalism. 

Nursing  and  nurses,  83,  85,  86- 
94,  95-96,  98,  loi,  213;  pro- 
fessional status  of,  86-87,  90, 
91 ;  training  schools  and  teach- 
ing in,  87—89;  three  types  of 
nurses  professional,  89-92; 
salaries  and  comments,  92-94. 

Nutrition  work  and  workers, 
83,  85,  103-104,  117-119,  120- 
122,  123— 125.  See  Home  eco- 
nomics. 

Occupational  therapy  and  thera- 
pists, 83,  99-100,  323.  See  Men- 
tal hygiene. 

Oflfice  managers  and  organizers, 

233-234- 

Oflfice  work  and  workers,  223- 
247;  psychology  of,  225-226; 
clerical  and  professional 
workers,  226 ;  stenographers 
and  secretaries,  226-232 ;  cor- 
respondents, 232-233 ;  oflfice 
managers  and  organizers,  233— 
234,  235-236 ;  accountants,  236- 
238;  filing  experts  and  busi- 
ness librarians,  238-239;  train- 
ing, 240-242 ;  salaries  and 
comments,  243-247.  See  Com- 
mercial work. 

Organizers,  135,  160,  219,  236. 


"Outside"  selling  and  salesmen, 
128,  205,  234,  253,  262-263,  266, 
271. 

Parish  visitors  and  workers. 
See  Religious  work. 

Pathologists,  48,  66,  67-68,  70- 
71,.  339,  340,  341. 

Persistence  in  employment.  See 
Labor  turnover. 

Personnel,  Army  Committee  on 
Classification  of.  See  Classi- 
fication of  Personnel,  Army 
Committee  on. 

Personnel  specifications.  See 
Specifications. 

Personnel  work  and  workers, 
156,  185-200,  206,  211,  214,  224, 
242,  248,  260,  264,  267 ;  descrip- 
tion of,  185-190;  training,  191- 
192;  salaries  and  comments, 
192-200. 

Physical  education  and  workers 
in,  83,  100-102. 

Placement,  not  primarily  an 
education  function,  397,  408, 
412,  419-420. 

Play  and  playground  workers. 
See  Physical  education  and 
recreation. 

Political  work  and  workers,  7Z- 
7S,  135-137. 

Practice  work,  "field"  and 
"shop,"  as  part  of  professional 
training,  46,  88-89,  106,  120, 
166,  167-168,  169-170,  175-177, 
191,  213-214,  216-217,  231-232, 
234,  248,  387,  418,  4357436. 

Pre-professional  courses  in  med- 
icine, 64,  68-69 ;  law,  72),  75 ; 
nursing,  86-87,  91-92,  93 ;  psy- 
chiatric social  work,  98-99; 
health  work,  102;  agriculture, 
114;  home  economics,  118-119, 
131 ;  social  work,  169,  170-171 ; 
indu9:trial  work,  205,  216,  221- 
222;  commercial  work,  2J^2; 
banking,  256-257,  263;  public 
utilities,  273;  journalism,  288, 


INDEX 


465 


290-291 ;  editorial  work,  294 ; 
chemistry,  327-328,  330-33I ; 
geology,  337;  all  sciences,  341 ; 
psychology,  348;  statistics, 
350-351;  teaching,  2>-/-j,  380, 
381,  384-385,  387;  source  of 
term,  412;  A.  C.  A.  commit- 
tee on,  426;  under-graduate 
pre-professional  choices,  430- 
432,  435. 

Private  practice.  See  Consult- 
ants, Group  practice.  Inde- 
pendent practice. 

Professional,  uses  of  term,  i,  3; 
ethics,  2,  6,  15,  189,  193,  208, 
217,  264,  281,  282,  301,  304,  438- 
441 ;  workers,  distinguished 
from  non-professional,  7-1 1, 
15-17;  types  of,  8,  25,  34; 
grades  of,  34,  60-61 ;  women, 
criticisms  of,  18-19;  sugges- 
tions for,  430-442. 

Professional  relations,  393 ;  with 
other  groups  of  workers,  6, 
13,  20,  32;  among  professions, 
6-7,  414-418;  appointment 
bureaus  as  bureaus  of,  412- 
414,  421-422,  425,  429. 

Professions,  definitions  and 
criteria  of,  i— 17;  social  charac- 
ter and  origins  of,  5,  6,  11,  13; 
classifications  of,  12-15.  46-49, 
338;  new  spirit  in,  i,  6,  20,  34, 
416-418.     See  Democracy. 

Promotion,  system.s  of,  36,  42-^5, 

234.  439-  ,  .      . 

P.sychiatry  and  psychiatrists,  66, 

67,  343,  345,  346.    See  Mental 

hygiene. 
Psychiatric   social   workers,  96- 

100. 
Psychological    clinics,    344,    34S> 

347,  387-388. 
Psychological  tests.    See  Tests. 
Psychology     and     psychologists, 

of  professions,   13,  43,  80,  89, 

99-100,    117,    124-125,    157-159. 

225-226,  229-230,  279,  288,  304, 

308,  309-310,  311-312,  315;  anfl 


medicine,  67,  343,  346;  types, 
344-347,  348;  training,  347- 
348;  salaries  and  comments, 
349-350. 

Public  health  and  workers  in, 
62,  64,  65-67,  83-86,  88-89.  90- 
91,  212-213.  See  Medicine, 
Mental  hygiene,  Nursing,  Nu- 
trition work,  etc. 

Publicity  work  and  workers,  in 
various  professions,  129-130, 
132,  177-178,  239,  242,  245. 
261-262,  ^"^ ;  distinguished 
from  advertising,  281-283,  306- 
307;  information  services,  165, 
279,  282-283,  359;  vocational 
information,  378,  420-429. 

Public  utilities  and  workers  in, 
104,  254,  272-275. 

Publishing  work  and  workers, 
295-298;  not  literary  work, 
296;  secretarial  approach  no 
longer  necessary,  295-296: 
types,  296-297 ;  comments, 
297-298. 

Quantity  feeding  work  and 
workers,  104,  124-128.  See 
Home  economics  and  Nutri- 
tion work. 

Rating   scales.     See    Promotion, 

systems  of,  and   Scott  Rating 

Scale. 
Real  estate  and  workers  in,  254, 

276-277.   See  Architecture  and 

Housing. 
Reclassifications  of  civil  service 

positions,  45-471  152-154.  Zyj- 

338.    See  Civil  Service. 
Recreation,    loo-ioi,     134,    137- 

139,  145-147,  310.  311-313.  315. 

317-318.       See     Leisure     time 

and   Physical  education. 
Recruiting  of  workers,  179.  224, 

yiZ^  396,  397.  418,  419.  429- 
Religious  work  and  workers,  78- 

82. 
Research  and  workers  in.  25-27. 

34,  61,  67-68,  74,  86,   129-130. 


466 


INDEX 


132,  142-143,  178,  201-202,  2I0l- 
211,  216-219,  240-242,  24s,  250, 
258,  261-262,  267,  29s,  303,  325, 
327-328,  330-331,  334,  33&-340, 
342-343,  374,  389-390,  390-391, 
392. 

Roentgenologists,  64,  341. 

Rural  work  and  workers,  86,  91, 
106-107,  110-112,  175,  286-287, 
357-358,  376,  383,  387. 

Salaries,  standardizations  of,  45, 
58-61 ;  recent  studies  of,  47, 
59-60;  at  "existence,"  "thrift" 
and  "culture"  levels,  60;  in 
medicine,  69-70;  law,  76-77; 
nursing,  92-93 ;  hospital  social 
work,  97;  home  demonstration 
work,  108;  farm  and  garden 
management,  112-113;  commu- 
nity and  civic,  150;  civil  serv- 
ice, federal,  state,  municipal, 
49-52,  53-58,  155,  335-340,  351- 
353  ;  social  work,  179-183 ;  per* 
sonnel  work,  192-194,  197;  in- 
dustrial work,  221 ;  account- 
ancy, 237—238;  secretarial  and 
other  office  work,  243-246;  re- 
tail stores,  251;  bank  work, 
265;  insurance,  271;  public 
utilities,  274;  journalism,  290, 
293;  motion-picture  work,  300; 
advertising,  305 ;  designing, 
324;  sciences,  53-58,  328-329, 
335.  338,  339;  psychology,  349; 
statistics,  352,  353 ;  library 
work,  49-52,  363,  364;  museum 
work,  368,  369,  380-382. 

Salesmanship,  128,  205,  234,  247- 
253,  262-263,  '^^ 

Scientific  work  and  workers,  26, 
53-58,  67,  325-343;  training, 
325-328,   341-342;    types,    329- 

330,  332,  335-341 ;  salaries  and 
comments,  53-58,  32&-329,  330- 

331,  ZZZ-ZU,  335,  338-339,  342- 
343. 

Scott  Rating  Scale,  37,  41-43. 
Secretarial  work  and  secretaries. 


19,  227-232,  241-242,  244-247, 
437.    See  Office  work. 

Securing  employment.  See  Em- 
ployment,  modes   of   securing. 

Social  hygiene  work  and  work- 
ers, 65,  67,  102. 

Smith-Towner    Bill,    382-383. 

Social  work  and  workers,  94—99, 
121,  133-134,  15^184,  Z7S-Z1^, 
387-389;  a  group  of  occupa- 
tions, 156;  changing  relations 
of,  156-157;  professional  char- 
acter and  status  of,  157-161 ; 
mass  work  and  case  work, 
159-163;  types,  163-166;  train- 
ing and  graduates  of  worker, 
172;  numbers,  salaries,  and 
comments,  173-184;  education 
and,  175-176,  375-376,  387-389. 

Special  libraries,  238-239,  261- 
262,  359.     See  Library  work. 

Specifications,  professional,  15, 
36-61,  199-200,  335-336,  351- 
353,  388,  407,  417;  professional 
importance  of,  36-37,  45-46; 
cooperation  of  industries  and 
colleges  in,  15,  45-46;  speci- 
mens of,  37-40,  49-59,  335- 
2>Z^,  35 1-353- .  See  Committee 
on  Classification  of  Personnel. 

Statistical  work  and  statisticians, 
178,  221,  240,  302,  350-354. 

Story  tellers,  298,  367. 

Surveys,  86,  91,  142-143,  164,  178, 
391.  See  Research  and  Ex- 
hibits. 

Teaching  and  teachers,  373-392 ; 
fundamental  importance  of, 
373-375 ;  social  character  of, 
175-176,  374-375,  387,  389;  new 
spirit  and  outlooks  in,  375-376 ; 
reasons  for  drift  away  from, 
376—381 ;  new  measures  pro- 
posed, 381-384;  professional 
training,  384-386;  types,  374- 
375,  386-388;  educational  ad- 
ministration, 389-390 ;  educa- 
tional research,  390-392. 


INDEX 


467 


Technological  work  and  work- 
ers, 326,  331-332,  333-334,  33&- 
339,  340,  341-342.  See  Scien- 
tific work. 

Tests,  psychological,  general 
and  special  intelligence;  per- 
formance or  trade ;  vocational, 
43-45,    175-176,   188,    191,    199- 

200,  387-388,  421-422,  433434- 
Textile  experts,   117,  130,  341. 
Trade  journals,  work  on,  292. 
Trade   unions,   and   professional 

workers,    27-28,    30,    31,    189, 

201,  215,  217,  219-220,  225,  375, 

379.. 
Training    in    service,    163,    166- 
167,  176,  179,  241-242,  387,  417- 
418. 

Vacations,  educational  uses  of, 
46,  88,  170-171,  213-214,  411, 
435-436. 

Visiting  teachers,  374,  375,  387, 
389. 

Vocational  advisers  or  counsel- 
ors, 374,  423-425.  See  Voca- 
tional guidance. 

Vocational  bureaus,  388,  389. 
See  Bureaus  and  occupations. 


Vocational     conferences,     42^ 

423. 

Vocational  guidance,  388-389, 
428;  a  part  of  educational 
guidance,  388,  411-412,  414; 
in  colleges,  through  appoint- 
ment bureaus,  412-414,  418- 
422;  faculty,  student,  and 
alumnse  advisers,  411-414,  420, 
425-426 ;  courses  in,  388,  425 ; 
relation  with  outside  informa- 
tion and  placement  services, 
428-430. 

Vocational  teaching  and  teach- 
ers, 104,  241,  374-375,  386-388, 
407. 


Women.  See  Men  and  women 
and   Professional   women. 

Women's  Educational  and  In- 
dustrial Union,  231,  277,  398, 
401,  404,  405,  423. 


Young  Women's  Christian  Asso- 
ciations, 30,  58-59,  78,  79-80, 
loi,  120,  125,  liiS,  167,  182, 
395,  409- 


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